Spanish low-cost carrier just announced that they are launching (resuming really) domestic flights in France.

Starting October 16th, they will operate from Paris ORY to MRS, MPL and BES with 2 weekly flights each.

https://www.air-journal.fr/2020-09-22-vueling-annonce-le-lancement-de-trois-lignes-domestiques-en-france-5222842.html (link in French only sorry)

I for one am very dubious about those flights. U2 tried both ORY-MRS and ORY-BES and failed. Paris - Marseille is just a 3hrs TGV ride so unless you're travelling from Paris's south suburbs and going outside of Marseille, or if you are connecting in Paris, flights are very uncompetitive. Air France also just announced the end of their "Navette" service to MPL, meaning they will go down from 10 to 6 flights a day on this route.

VY already tried French domestic services (I remember TLS-LIL and TLS-NCE but there might have been a few others) but that didn't last long.

The French domestic market is among the "best" perfoming in Europe at the moment, recovering faster than expected, with passengers numbers down "only" 49.8% in July and 30% in August. Mainland France to overseas France was only down 20% in August year to year.

Consecutively U2 and V7 both announced a bunch of new French domestic services.

Which are the new easyJet and Volotea domestic routes?

LEVEL is selling Non-Stop flights from Orly to Montreal, Newark etc. - so why are these new domestic flights not sold as LEVEL as well?! Hopefully, they will fit as connection for additional passenger traffic. Again, one market and with LEVEL and VUELING 2 different IAG lcc brands...

debonair wrote:

LEVEL is selling Non-Stop flights from Orly to Montreal, Newark etc. - so why are these new domestic flights not sold as LEVEL as well?! Hopefully, they will fit as connection for additional passenger traffic. Again, one market and with LEVEL and VUELING 2 different IAG lcc brands...

LEVEL from ORY is gone.

I wonder however if they will consolidate Vueling in one Paris airport (ORY). Before COVID VY had bases in both CDG and ORY.

debonair wrote:

LEVEL is selling Non-Stop flights from Orly to Montreal, Newark etc. - so why are these new domestic flights not sold as LEVEL as well?! Hopefully, they will fit as connection for additional passenger traffic. Again, one market and with LEVEL and VUELING 2 different IAG lcc brands...

At the IAG 2020 half year results presentation on 31st July, for Level, amongst other things, IAG stated:
* Focus on Barcelona
* 5 fewer A330s (2 vs.7)
* Closure of Paris (subject to consultation)
* Potential 190 redundancies in Paris (subject to consultation)

So, unless this has changed, Level longhaul services from Paris have ended.

SCQ83 wrote:

debonair wrote:

LEVEL is selling Non-Stop flights from Orly to Montreal, Newark etc. - so why are these new domestic flights not sold as LEVEL as well?! Hopefully, they will fit as connection for additional passenger traffic. Again, one market and with LEVEL and VUELING 2 different IAG lcc brands...

LEVEL from ORY is gone.

I wonder however if they will consolidate Vueling in one Paris airport (ORY). Before COVID VY had bases in both CDG and ORY.

According to Wikipedia it's still there, but the flights have been suspended due to travel restrictions.

However Orly is also the home base for FrenchBee, offering some interesting low-cost long haul flights. Vueling might haul some passengers to Orly where they self-connect to FrenchBee.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

debonair wrote:

LEVEL is selling Non-Stop flights from Orly to Montreal, Newark etc. - so why are these new domestic flights not sold as LEVEL as well?! Hopefully, they will fit as connection for additional passenger traffic. Again, one market and with LEVEL and VUELING 2 different IAG lcc brands...

LEVEL from ORY is gone.

I wonder however if they will consolidate Vueling in one Paris airport (ORY). Before COVID VY had bases in both CDG and ORY.

According to Wikipedia it's still there, but the flights have been suspended due to travel restrictions.

However Orly is also the home base for FrenchBee, offering some interesting low-cost long haul flights. Vueling might haul some passengers to Orly where they self-connect to FrenchBee.

Wikipedia is as reputable as its sources, in which case its source on OpenSkies/Level France is this: https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... -late-3q20

Despite earlier reports that IAG was considering the closure of OpenSkies, LEVEL is again selling flights from Orly to New York Newark and Montréal Trudeau from October 1, to Pointe à Pitre from October 2, and to Fort de France from October 15.

Though it's a bit outdated, as everything up to the 25th of October or the start of the winter season has been zeroed out. French bee on the other hand has postponed their EWR/SFO flights to December.

In OpenSkies' application last year for ORY-GIG (before the France-Brazil rights were awarded to French bee and Air France) they cited using Vueling for feed. But it sounds like there wasn't so much a LV/VY codeshare through ORY in place for the OpenSkies flights, in the way there's a pre-existing IB/VY codeshare for the BCN-based/IB-operated Level flights.

When it comes to different brands, remember that short-haul Level (VK) has been gone since entering insolvency in June. VK flights were also marketed by Vueling, but this didn't seem to be mirrored on Level's own site in the manner where itineraries with VY flights could be booked online; maybe at most IB/VK or LV/VK itineraries were possible through it, at least to my knowledge.

Either way it hasn't seemed very organized or harmonized whatsoever.

SCQ83 wrote:

Which are the new easyJet and Volotea domestic routes?

U2 launched NCE-BIQ, NCE-LRH, ORY-MPL (a route that will now see TO, U2 and VY) and ORY-BIQ, all post-covid and summer only.

V7 launched LYS-AJA/BIA/CLY, RNS-AJA/BIA/CLY, BVA-BIA, MPL-FSC, BIQ-LIL/RNS/SXB, BES-NCE, LIL-PGF, also all post-covid.

-Really short notice- flights due to start in 20 days
-Poor schedules.
-All will face competence from AF & TGV.

This sounds to me like Vueling wanted to make a bit of noise and get some attention from media in a market where they are still quite unknown (AF, Transavia, Easyjet, Ryanair... maybe even Volotea they are all better known in France above Vueling); they might anyway move/utilize the planes around for thec/training reasons; and more importantly defend their Orly slots which before corona were quite coveted. The reason Vueling stepped in CDG with a second base in Paris was they couldn’t grow in ORY as much as they wanted. All frames which operated via ORY were A321s in order to maximize capacity in all departures.

I don’t think these new routes will last long...

Vueling has a long life of failures in Paris/France. I have seen so many campaigns in the metro or even the baguette papers all over the years. But they never seem to click.

IMO they should move everything to ORY if they now have the chance and focus on flights to Spain/Italy/Portugal where the brand has some recognition.

SCQ83 wrote:

LEVEL from ORY is gone.

I wonder however if they will consolidate Vueling in one Paris airport (ORY). Before COVID VY had bases in both CDG and ORY.

If you don't believe it, just go on to their website, as you still can purchase Non-stop longhaul flights with LEVEL from ORY...

25th OCT 2020
Paris (Orly) (ORY) 16:40
New York (Newark) (EWR) 20:30
Duration 8h 50m
Operating Openskies for LEVEL France
Flight LV 8009
Terminal 3
Summary
Economy x 1€89.54
Taxes€69.46
Total€159.00

a350lover wrote:

-Really short notice- flights due to start in 20 days
-Poor schedules.
-All will face competence from AF & TGV.

This sounds to me like Vueling wanted to make a bit of noise and get some attention from media in a market where they are still quite unknown (AF, Transavia, Easyjet, Ryanair... maybe even Volotea they are all better known in France above Vueling); they might anyway move/utilize the planes around for thec/training reasons; and more importantly defend their Orly slots which before corona were quite coveted. The reason Vueling stepped in CDG with a second base in Paris was they couldn’t grow in ORY as much as they wanted. All frames which operated via ORY were A321s in order to maximize capacity in all departures.

I don’t think these new routes will last long...

I wouldn't call it poor schedule, for leisure passengers it is pretty perfect in both directions.
TGV or AF on these timings will be extremely expensive, VY will be able to charge FSC fares with a LCC cost and product, it's a guarenteed win for me.
Question... what do they do with the fleet the rest of the week, it's surprising to have these timings as slack in the schedule... in normal times

A330Inter wrote:

I wouldn't call it poor schedule, for leisure passengers it is pretty perfect in both directions.
TGV or AF on these timings will be extremely expensive, VY will be able to charge FSC fares with a LCC cost and product, it's a guarenteed win for me.
Question... what do they do with the fleet the rest of the week, it's surprising to have these timings as slack in the schedule... in normal times

I believe AF will soon react with bottom fares for those frequencies close to Vueling’s departures. On top of that, Vueling won’t capture any other traffic apart from Parisians in the South suburbs whereas AF fills those planes with connections. Don’t see Vueling lasting long in domestics France sorry.

a350lover wrote:

I believe AF will soon react with bottom fares for those frequencies close to Vueling’s departures. On top of that, Vueling won’t capture any other traffic apart from Parisians in the South suburbs whereas AF fills those planes with connections. Don’t see Vueling lasting long in domestics France sorry.

Even for those living in the South suburbs, catching a TGV at Massy Palaiseau, which is right next to ORY is wayyyy more convenient and cheaper since most trains from Massy to Marseille are operated by Ouigo, the low-cost arm of the SNCF (with ticket starting at 15 euros one way). For those going North of Marseille, the train again more convenient with Aix-en-provence TGV station being 10 min away from MRS, with Ouigo services to both Paris center (Gare de Lyon) and Massy-palaiseau TGV.

I just don't see it working out for them.

A330Inter wrote:

I wouldn't call it poor schedule, for leisure passengers it is pretty perfect in both directions.
TGV or AF on these timings will be extremely expensive, VY will be able to charge FSC fares with a LCC cost and product, it's a guarenteed win for me.
Question... what do they do with the fleet the rest of the week, it's surprising to have these timings as slack in the schedule... in normal times

Those are on normal times. This summer I took a few TGVs/Ouigos on peak times (read Paris-beach on a Friday evening on July) and they were very cheap. Those are the kind of tickets that usually would go for 100 euros but this summer were for sale for 36 euros or something like that.

With the way COVID is going in Europe (just this afternoon new restrictions in Marseille or Paris among other cities) I can't see the domestic market improving, or TGV tickets getting more expensive.

Vueling has been stepping up its advertising in Paris. I've seen them plastered all over buses here...

FromCDGtoSYD wrote:

Vueling has been stepping up its advertising in Paris. I've seen them plastered all over buses here...

Every now and then Vueling has adds campaigns in Paris. When they decide to change their local strategy for whatever reason and "relaunch" the brand. Vueling opened their first CDG base (their first international base) back in 2007 (!). Then was closed, opened in ORY, reopened in CDG...

https://www.hosteltur.com/42583_vueling ... paris.html

So 13 years of bases and the brand is not yet well stablished. It is like a tide, it goes away and it returns soon after.