Nantes Atlantique: 10% growth already in 2012; Volotea adds the most routes

Volotea’s arrival at Nantes Atlantique Airport in June 2012 helped boost the airport’s route network significantly and, together with a range of other airlines starting services, the airport can now boast more than 20 new routes since January 2012.

Increased seasonality in 2012

The western French airport first passed the 3 million passenger mark in 2010 (following a 14.1% annual increase), only to see its traffic grow again, by more than 7.3%, in the following year. Traffic data for the first nine months of 2012 shows that another 9.8% more passengers passed through Nantes Atlantique, itself a slight improvement on the 7.1% growth for the same period in 2011/2010.

Better availability of flights, especially to some popular holiday destinations in the Mediterranean, seems to have had a big impact on the airport’s seasonality pattern for the year. Traditionally, May would be the peak season in Nantes; however, in 2012 August turned out to be the airport’s busiest month.

Air France loses (some) ground

Unsurprisingly, Air France, whose 15 routes constitute almost 70% of the airport’s frequencies and some 57% of the overall capacity, tops the list of largest airline customers in Nantes, although notably, the airline has lost some 9% of its capacity share at the airport when compared to the year before, mainly because of the growth of others.

easyJet, which has launched flights to Basel, Geneva and Toulouse since December 2011, has more than doubled the capacity it offers. Another low-cost carrier, Ryanair, has in turn reduced its offering by 10% by cutting frequencies to Dublin. Two non-European airlines operate to Nantes Atlantique, Royal Air Maroc and Tunisair. The Moroccan carrier has recently withdrawn its service to Agadir reducing the capacity in offers by almost 36%. However, it continues to fly to both Casablanca and Marrakech. Tunisair flies to the French airport four weekly from Tunis and twice-weekly from the Mediterranean island of Djerba.

More new routes from Volotea and Transavia.com in 2013

New route launches for 2013 have already been announced by Air France (Figari), Transavia.com France (Ajaccio) and Volotea (Palermo and Florence), and – judging by the current’s year result – more are to be expected. Evidently, before the year’s end, four more routes are yet to be launched (two each from Transavia.com France and Volotea).

Launch date	Airline	Destination	WF*	A/c
25-Mar-12	Vueling	Malaga (AGP)	3	A320
25-Mar-12	Vueling	Rome Fiumicino (FCO)	3	A320
27-Mar-12	Vueling	Venice (VCE)	3	A320
30-Mar-12	easyJet	Nice (NCE)	5	A319
05-Apr-12	Transavia.com France	Rome Fiumicino (FCO)	2	B738
05-Apr-12	Transavia.com France	Lisbon (LIS)	2	B738
07-Apr-12	Air France	Ajaccio (AJA)	1	CRJ1000
01-Jun-12	Volotea	Ajaccio (AJA)	3	B717
02-Jun-12	Volotea	Bastia (BIA)	2	B717
02-Jun-12	Volotea	Palma de Mallorca (PMI)	2	B717
03-Jun-12	Volotea	Prague (PRG)	2	B717
03-Jun-12	Volotea	Toulon (TLN)	2	B717
15-Jun-12	Volotea	Ibiza (IBZ)	2	B717
18-Jun-12	Volotea	Biarritz (BIQ)	2	B717
01-Aug-12	Volotea	Menorca (MAH)	2	B717
01-Aug-12	Volotea	Valencia (VLC)	2	B717
03-Aug-12	Volotea	Olbia (OLB)	2	B717
03-Aug-12	Volotea	Perpignan (PGF)	2	B717
10-Sep-12	Volotea	Montpellier (MPL)	3	B717
10-Sep-12	Volotea	Munich (MUC)	3	B717
11-Sep-12	Volotea	Metz/Nancy	3	B717
11-Sep-12	Volotea	Milan Bergamo (BGY)	3	B717
11-Sep-12	Volotea	Strasbourg (SXB)	3	B717
01-Oct-12	Volotea	Lille (LIL)	4	B717
28-Oct-12	Flybe	Southampton (SOU)	7	Q400
28-Oct-12	Volotea	Venice (VCE)	2	B717
08-Dec-12	Volotea	Grenoble (GNB)	2	B717
20-Dec-12	Transavia.com France	Venice	2	B737
21-Dec-12	Transavia.com France	Berlin Tegel (TXL)	2	B737
22-Dec-12	Volotea	Tenerife Sur (TFS)	1	B717
30-Mar-13	Air France	Figari (FSC)	2	CRJ1000
15-Apr-13	Transavia.com France	Ajaccio (AJA)	2	B738
26-Apr-13	Volotea	Palermo (PMO)	2	B717
02-Jun-13	Volotea	Florence (FLR)	2	B717
Source: anna.aero New Route Database. *WF: Weekly Frequencies at launch.