A historic moment ! After nearly 8 decades of close ties, Air France bids farewell to Paris’ Orly airport.

• After nearly 8 decades of close ties, Air France bids farewell to Paris’ Orly airport this Saturday, March 28th.
• The passengers of Air France flight AF6231, landing this Saturday, March 28, 2026, at 9 p.m., will be the last Air France passengers to touch down at Orly Airport.
• A few hours earlier, those of flight AF0642 will have been the last to leave the apron of the Val-de-Marne Orly Airport (ORY).
• After 80 years of aviation history, the French carrier and Orly Airport are experiencing their final hours together, handing over the reins to Transavia, the low-cost subsidiary of the Air France-KLM group.
• This decision is not new; it has been planned for three years justifying reports of the decline in traffic on domestic routes between 2019 and 2023. Reports suggest, departure flights from Orly was 40%, while 60% for same-day round trips.”.

After nearly 80 years of close ties, Air France bids farewell to Paris’ Orly airport this Saturday, March 28th. This decision was motivated by the deficit represented by the airline’s flights departing from the south of the capital.

Air France is turning the page. Since June 24, 1946, the aircraft of France’s flagship airline had made Orly’s runways their preferred playground, before the opening of Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle in 1974. “Yet we tried everything,” explained Henri Hourcade, Air France-KLM’s Managing Director for France

The last aircraft bearing the French tricolor flag to take off from one of the three runways at Paris-Orly will be AF6231 bound for Nice . It will depart at 9 p.m., marking the airline’s final farewell to this airport, the second busiest in France, with over 33 million passengers projected for 2025.

Since the first Air France flight to New York on June 24, 1946, the French flag carrier has been inextricably linked to the history of Orly Airport. The airline’s departure from Le Bourget in 1952 only strengthened this mutual connection. Boeing 767s, 747s, and Caravelles, among others, have graced the runways for the operator.

But the company paid the price for the rise of rail travel and the popular SNCF service that emerged in the 2000s. The 2021 Climate and Resilience Law also dealt a damaging blow to domestic flights offered by Air France, prohibiting them when a rail alternative existed in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. Covid-19, for its part, completed this decline, directly influencing the behavior of French consumers, who increasingly turned to digital alternatives (teleworking, video conferencing) for certain trips, when possible.

The company’s rich history at Orly Airport was therefore not enough to retain Air France. “We tried everything, such as reducing frequencies. For example, by going from 25 to 12 flights between Orly and Toulouse, and between Orly and Nice.

We launched new fares, new subscriptions. But we had to face the facts: these flights no longer corresponded to Air France’s business model and our customers’ consumption patterns,” explained Henri Hourcade, Managing Director for France at Air France-KLM.

Air France is now handing over the reins to Transavia, the low-cost subsidiary of the Air France-KLM group, at Orly. 

“Transavia will inaugurate services between Paris-Orly and Toulouse, Nice and Marseille from March 29, 2026, offered 8, 8 and 2 times a day respectively ,” the group stated in a press release.