Air France has announced that it will commence Paris CDG to 
London Gatwick flights. Beginning in March, it will fly twice daily. It’ll be the first time that the airport pair has had two operators in six years. The new route is bound to make my celebratory Weekly Routes article (see the most recent edition).
Influenced by slot availability, competitive fees/charges, and strong passenger awareness, Gatwick has added multiple airlines recently. Since mid-November, for example, new airline announcements have included Air Arabia (two daily flights from Sharjah), Condor (three daily from Frankfurt), Jet2 (new base), and Qanot Sharq (twice-weekly from Tashkent). On November 23, the Isles of Scilly Skybus replaced the now-defunct Eastern Airways from Newquay.
Air France Returns To Gatwick
The French flag carrier has a reasonably long history at Gatwick. According to Cirium Diio, it most recently flew to the West Sussex airport in 2007, when its regional subsidiary operated from Strasbourg. Multiple other French cities have been served before, including Bordeaux, Nantes, and Paris.
Air France will return to Gatwick after an absence of 19 years. Just this time, it will be from its 
Paris CDG hub. It will touch down on March 29, when northern carriers switch to summer schedules based on IATA slot seasons. The following schedule shows that it will be particularly good for global connectivity via CDG. Coincidentally or not, Air France’s transatlantic joint-venture partner Delta recently pulled out of Gatwick.
The 148-seat Airbus A220-300, which is mainline equipment, will be deployed. Ch-aviation shows it has 50 frames, each in a desirable 2-3 layout—certainly preferable to the commonplace 3-3 offering. For those traveling in business class, they can either have two seats next to each other when flying together or have the middle seat blocked.
|
Frequency |
CDG To Gatwick; Local Times* |
Gatwick To CDG; Local Times** |
|---|---|---|
|
Daily |
9:15 am-9:25 am (1h 10m) |
10:25 am-12:40 pm (1h 15m) |
|
Daily |
3:35 pm-3:45 pm (1h 10m) |
5:10 pm-7:25 pm (1h 15m) |
|
* As the actual schedule varies slightly, this is an example based on the first week of April. Shown in Simple Flying’s new time format |
* As the actual schedule varies slightly, this is an example based on the first week of April. Shown in Simple Flying’s new time format |
A Look At The Gatwick-CDG Market
easyJet is, for now, the sole operator between Gatwick and CDG. The UK low-cost carrier has served the very short route, which covers just 166 nautical miles (307 km) each way, since 2014. When writing on December 4, the latest information shows that easyJet plans up to five daily flights next April, which will be the first full month of Air France’s service.
The airport pair last had two operators in 2020, when Vueling also operated. It had served the market for five years. Rather than give up on the capital-to-capital link, it switched to serving Gatwick from Orly in 2020, with this route continuing today. It is the sole carrier between Orly and the London area, which helps its performance and enables another area of the French capital to be better served.
According to the UK Civil Aviation Authority, the pair transported 728,444 round-trip passengers between Gatwick and Paris last year. Split equally but unfairly over the year, 1,996 passengers flew daily. And virtually everyone only flew locally; they did not connect elsewhere. However, Cirium Diio capacity data shows they only filled 80% of the seats, meaning that the capacity outstripped the traffic.
Despite being a huge point-to-point market, there was overcapacity. The entry of Air France thus looks dodgy. However, it will primarily focus on connections, with its lower-capacity machines helping to achieve good loads and higher yields. It’ll be one of the few continental European network carriers to serve Gatwick. Lufthansa, for example, ended its Frankfurt-Gatwick operation in 2024.
29 Hours: China Eastern Begins World’s New Longest 1-Stop Route
It has a longer duration and covers more distance than any other one-stop scheduled passenger service.
Air France’s UK Network
The latest route means that Air France will have 146 weekly departures from CDG to the UK in April, with up to 22 daily departures. It will have 41% of the CDG-UK market, with easyJet being the largest carrier (159 weekly). Generally, Air France uses KLM for the UK, with 467 weekly departures from Amsterdam to 18 airports. KLM doesn’t serve Gatwick, though.
The latest information shows that Air France plans 42 weekly flights from CDG to Heathrow (six daily); 27 to Birmingham (three to four daily); 25 to Manchester (two to four daily); 21 to Edinburgh (three daily); 17 to Newcastle (two to three daily); and now 14 to Gatwick (two daily). In the past 20 years, Air France also flew to Aberdeen, Bristol, Glasgow, London City, and Southampton.
