Vueling launches major Paris Orly route expansion; now the airline’s second biggest base

Vueling started flying its raft of new routes from Paris ORY on Tuesday 2 November. As previously reported, the LCC, which is part of IAG, announced almost 30 new routes from the French capital after it was awarded slots that Air France had to give up, in exchange for financial support from the French government. The new routes launched so far are:

• 2 November: Bari, Belfast BFS, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Leipzig, Milan BGY, Nuremberg, Turin
• 3 November: Agadir, Asturias, Birmingham, Bologna, Granada, Hamburg, Stockholm ARN, Tangier
• 4 November: Bergen, Billund, Glasgow, Newcastle, Zaragoza
• 5 November: Genoa, Gothenburg, Jerez, Malta, Santander

That makes a total of 27 new routes that have been launched in just four days. Service to Cork is now set to start on 26 November once the runway works at the Irish airport have been completed. In addition, Kiev KBP will be served 2-weekly from 5 December.

In October, Vueling served 15 destinations in Spain from Paris ORY as well as seven destinations outside of Spain; three in Italy (Florence, Milan MXP and Rome FCO), two in Portugal (Lisbon and Porto), as well as Copenhagen and Prague. All these destinations will continue to be served in W21/22 with the exception of Madrid.

While Barcelona remains by far Vueling’s busiest airport with over 700 weekly departures in November, Paris ORY is now in a clear second place and has seen a 44% increase in flights since November 2019. The only other non-Spanish airports in the top 15 (shown in purple) are Amsterdam, Rome FCO and Lisbon. In total, Vueling is operating flights to 89 airports in November, according to Cirium Data and Analytics for the week commencing 8 November 2021.

Resuming CDG flights in December

Prior to the pandemic, Vueling had also had a base at Paris CDG and was serving 19 destinations from the airport in August 2019, operating some 150 weekly departures. According to Cirium, Vueling plans to resume service at CDG from 1 December, with double-daily flights to Barcelona and Seville. A broader network of routes is then expected to follow in S22.