French Bee Welcomed in Montreal
Great News for Montreal!
French Bee exclusively uses A350s. (Picture: Aviation.hunter)
Montreal-Paris Gets A New Player
This week was finally French Bee’s inauguration of its new service from France to Canada. This move from the French airline is certainly to shake up the competition, but that is not all.
Recently, Aeroroutes – aviation website—reported that French Bee (FB), truly one of the few successful transatlantic low-cost airlines, is increasing its frequency on its new flight connecting Paris (ORY); the city of light, and Montreal (YUL), the second-largest city of Canada. Later in July, the airline will be increasing 7x weekly flight instead of the initially planned 4 times a week to adjust to demand. That indicates quite clearly that the route is the expected success it is. Corsair terminating its YUL service might also have to do with it.
Schedule is as following:
BF760 ORY1820 – 2000YUL 359 357
BF761 YUL2200 – 1100+1ORY 359 357
The French Bee A350-900 deployed for the mission will be departing Orly Airport in the late afternoon to arrive at Montreal-Trudeau International in the evening. The Airbus will takes off from YUL at night and land in Paris an hour before noon.
The French low-cost’s A350s have 35 recliner seats in “Premium”, the airline’s premium economy, and 376 economy seats. As comparison, Air France’s a350s feature 34 flat bed business class seats, 24 recliner seats in premium economy and 266 standard seats in economy. This a good example of how the different business models of each airline affect their configuration choices. French Bee prefers capacity (406 seats in total) while Air France goes after the premium market (amounts to 324).
An Air France Boeing 777-300ER.
Air Transat in Turbulent Waters?
Montreal-Paris will be one of the toughest routes in Canada competitively. French Bee will be facing Air France, Air Canada, and Air Transat. It does seem however that French Bee is already doing well considering the recent increase. Air France will benefit from a well-established local base, its alliance, connections beyond Paris, and its frequency (around 4x times a day). The same can be said for Air Canada. However, things might not go as good for Air Transat, which is sadly already financially vulnerable.
An Air Transat A330.
Sure, the Air Transat brand is well known in Canada but with French Bee joining, I believe it might be harder for them to distinguish themselves from the competition. The airline brands itself as a leisure airline,, and is somewhat in between a low-cost and full-service carrier. Unlike AC and AF, the airline does not have an actual business class cabin, is not part of an alliance, and does not truly offer connections beyond Paris. It will be interesting to see how all of this develops and to see how TS evolves and adapts to this new change in the Montreal-Paris market.
