The French airline Air France has to radically reorganize its domestic route network due to the assumption of government support in the amount of seven billion euros. The reasons for this are on the one hand environmental requirements imposed on the carrier, but on the other hand efforts to be able to reduce costs.

It is therefore not at all surprising that the lion's share of the routes within France (excluding overseas territories) is to be handed over to the subsidiary Transavia France. A corresponding agreement with the responsible pilot union SNPL has already been concluded. The result is that cheap offshoots will take over large parts of the domestic routes from Paris-Orly by 2023. However: Air France will in future serve some selected routes that are considered to be particularly profitable with Airbus A220-300, the company said in a press release. These are to be used, for example, after Toulouse, Nice and Marseille from September 2021.

Transavia France wanted to grow much earlier, but an agreement with the pilots' union prevented this project. Until the clause was repealed, Transavia France's maximum fleet size was set in stone with 40 Boeing 737s. It was also agreed that this offshoot will only fly within Europe. In a more recent agreement, however, these restrictions were lifted, so that Air France can increasingly shift to the cheap subsidiary.

However, many domestic routes are considered to be loss-making, which is why an attempt is being made to bring them back into the profit zone via the lower costs of Transavia France. The main competitor is now the TGV service of the French state railway. The government intends to increasingly rely on these express trains in future.

The consequence of this is that there is now a requirement that Air France must give up all flight connections that can be reached within 2,5 hours by TGV. This restriction also applies to other airlines and must be implemented by 2023 at the latest. In aviation, however, this also has significant consequences in terms of jobs, as the Basel base, for example, is being closed. At least 1.020 jobs will be lost at Hop and at least 7.500 jobs will be lost in the French part of the Air France-KLM group.