Mark Laroche said Air France has suggested it could add more flights to its newly announced Ottawa-Paris schedule if the customer demand is there.
Ottawa International Airport’s CEO is hoping Air France’s decision to start flying directly from Paris to Ottawa this summer will clear the runway for more non-stop transatlantic routes to YOW.
France’s largest airline announced Thursday it plans to start flying between Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Ottawa International Airport five times a week beginning on June 27. It marks the first direct route between YOW and Europe since early 2020, when virtually all international flights from the airport were suspended during the pandemic.
“It’s a great connection,” Ottawa International Airport Authority chief executive Mark Laroche told OBJ on Friday. “It’s something that we were pursuing for a long time.”
The new service will run on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays using the carrier’s 224-seat Airbus A330-200 fleet. Laroche said Air France has suggested it could add more flights to its Ottawa schedule if the customer demand is there.
“It all depends on the response,” he said. “(Airbus aircraft) are extremely expensive assets, and so they can lose a lot of money very fast. If there’s not sufficient response from the market, you lose (routes) very quickly. It’s very hard to get back.”
Ottawa airport officials have been eyeing Charles de Gaulle as a potential destination for about a decade due to its status as one of Europe’s busiest hubs with connections to other parts of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and beyond.
Laroche said the airport authority worked with partners such as Ottawa Tourism, Tourism Outaouais, local boards of trade and Destination Canada, a Crown corporation that promotes tourism across the country, to land the new route. He refused to comment on whether the airport is providing any financial incentives to Air France.
He said talks between the carrier and YOW began heating up about three months ago. Laroche noted that Air France CEO Ben Smith, a Canadian who previously served as Air Canada’s chief operating officer, was familiar with Ottawa’s tourism industry from his days as the operator of a retail corporate travel agency in the 1990s.
“He knows the market well,” Laroche said. “That’s an (advantage) when you don’t have to convince the CEO of an airline of the potential of a market.
“Obviously, Air France saw an opportunity. This is very late in the season to announce a summer route, so they reacted to this opportunity quickly, and good on them. We’re super happy to have them.”
The news comes as Ottawa’s airport is slowly regaining momentum after getting hit hard during the pandemic.
Traffic at the terminal fell from an average of nearly 14,000 passengers a day in 2019 to fewer than 3,300 at the height of the COVID-19 crisis two years later. The daily average ticked back up to 8,200 passengers in 2022, but only about 255 people a day boarded international flights last year – a number YOW officials are eager to grow.
Laroche said he’s optimistic that routes to vital European hubs like London and Frankfurt will be restored to the airport’s schedule in the not-too-distant future.
“Success begets success,” he said. “What we’re saying is that Ottawa has an appetite for more direct connections, and if Air France is successful, there may be other interest from Air France or from other airlines. It’s ultimately their decisions, and it’s based on facts and evidence of a positive market response.”
Air France becomes the first carrier to operate transatlantic flights to Ottawa since Air Canada stopped direct routes to London and Frankfurt early in the pandemic after the federal government restricted international flights to airports in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.
Whether the country’s largest airline gets back in the international mix at YOW remains to be seen, Laroche said.
“It’s Air Canada’s business strategy,” he said. “Will this make them have a second look? I don’t know. I welcome all airlines that offer service at our airport.”
The news comes on the heels of Porter Airlines’ recent move to launch four new direct routes from YOW to Boston, Newark, Quebec City and Thunder Bay this spring.
The Toronto-based airline, which just began constructing two new aircraft maintenance hangars at the airport, is also debuting flights between Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and Ottawa this month.
Laroche said he expects Porter to announce more news related to YOW shortly.
“The airport is in a good position right now,” he said.
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