Twenty years after its creation, the Navette carries over 100 million travellers.
Everything began on 27 October 1996, following the deregulation of air transport that began 18 years earlier in the U.S. before arriving in Europe in the 1990s. In France, in 1994, TAT-European Airlines (a British Airways subsidiary) was authorized to operate the Orly-Marseille and Orly-Toulouse routes. Air Inter, facing fast-paced development in TGV high-speed rail traffic, saw its monopoly under attack – by TAT, and subsequently AOM and Air Liberté. Price wars were ruthless. During the first nine months of 1996, the domestic carrier carried no more than 62% of the market’s customers to Marseille and 55% to Nice and Toulouse.
Supported by the expertise of Air Inter that it finally acquired in April 1997, Air France launched the Navette service at the end of October 1996 on the three busiest destinations on the domestic network (Orly-Nice, Orly-Marseille and Orly-Toulouse). Flights were operated every hour and even more frequently during peak periods and the service was an instant success. From the following year, Air France won back 10% of customers travelling to Marseille and Toulouse.
Five cities are connected to Orly each day – Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux (since 1999), and Montpellier since autumn 2016.