New Routes of the Day (7 July 2023): Air France’s new routes from Nice

Air France introduced a pair of new seasonal routes from Nice to Marrakesh and Santorini on Friday 7 July and Saturday 8 July respectively. The 1,895-kilometre service to Marrakesh will run 2-weekly, on Mondays and Fridays, until 25 August with the A320-family fleet. It will compete directly against easyJet’s 4-weekly flights on the route. On the other hand, the French carrier will maintain a weekly service on the 1,750-kilometre journey to Santorini until 26 August. Operated with the A319 aircraft, there is no competition between the two.

Air France reinforces Nice seasonal network

During S23, Air France is maintaining a total of 12 seasonal summer routes out of Nice, among which are its new Marrakesh and Santorini additions. Alongside the two, the French carrier is also operating summer flights to Algiers, Athens, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Caen, Heraklion, Lille, Rennes, Strasbourg, and Tunis. These complement the carrier’s year-round operations from Côte d’Azur Airport to London LHR, Lyon, Paris CDG and Paris ORY.

Using Cirium schedules information data, during the peak summer month of August, Air France is offering just over 112,000 departing seats out of Nice on 762 flights. Although the number of flights is still down on August 2019 levels, capacity has increased almost 1% on four years ago.

Nice close to full recovery

Nice Airport handled 6.4 million passengers during the first half of the year, which is at 95.6% of its pre-pandemic traffic levels. During the six-month period, Nice saw 2.3 million travellers on domestic flights, while just over four million flew on international services. The bulk of the international passenger traffic was from Europe, with 2.2 million travelling to or from European Union member states, while 1.4 million were from outside the block within Europe.