Bordeaux airport will "go back several years"

Director of Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport, Pascal Personne returns for “20 Minutes” to the sudden stop of the infrastructure due to the epidemic of Covid-19, ev

Tarmac at Bordeaux Mérignac Airport - Mickaël Bosredon / 20 Minutes

Air France will operate two frequencies per week to Roissy in May, then a daily frequency from June 8.
The low cost flight program should restart towards the end of June.
On the other hand, the future of the Air France shuttle to Orly is seriously threatened, and the aeronautical sector is mobilizing to save it.
The sudden drop in traffic will cause Bordeaux airport to fall several years back, warns its director.

Almost stopped for more than a month, Bordeaux-Mérignac airport slowly restarted its activity on Monday, with a flight to Roissy. But recovery will be slow, and the boarding conditions for passengers will be profoundly changed, warns the director of infrastructure, Pascal Personne.

After more than a month of closure, Bordeaux-Mérignac airport reopened on Monday, how is this recovery going?

It is a small recovery but a recovery anyway, since Air France operated a flight to Roissy-CDG on Monday, and that it will apply a regime of two frequencies per week for the whole of May. The link to CDG will go to four frequencies on June 1, one frequency per day from June 8, then 10 frequencies per week from June 15, and this will drop a little to 14 weekly links from June 27. Air France will also relaunch Lyon at the rate of three frequencies per week from June 8, then KLM will relaunch Amsterdam at the rate of one frequency per day from June 1. It should be our first international flight, knowing that we should also have a daily flight from TAP (Air Portugal) to Lisbon from July 1. The Chalair company will also operate the connection to Brest again from June 8, twice a week, then Bordeaux-Montpellier from June 15.

What about low cost companies?

We are waiting for the Volotea program with probably a relaunch around mid-June or end of June from Strasbourg and several cities in Corsica. Concerning cities abroad, and in particular the south of Europe, this will be decided as the borders open, of course. The company also wanted to open a link to Algiers, but this will be subject to government decisions. We can imagine EasyJet and Ryanair resuming flights from the end of June, no doubt on domestic flights, and then to other European countries and Great Britain.

In addition, is the Air France shuttle, which previously operated 10 daily flights to Orly, really threatened?

Yes, it's true. The strong statement of the Minister of Economy [who indicated that “when you can make train journeys in less than 2:30, the plane is not justified”] on this subject was quite clear. But since then, the reactions from the economic and political milieu have also been very strong, especially from operators in the space and defense sectors. For Dassault it is very important to continue to have Bordeaux-Orly flights. Baas (Bordeaux-Aquitaine Aeronautics and Space), which brings together all the players in the sector, is also mobilizing, just like the CCI. It is a very important line in volume, with around 560,000 passengers per year, and business customers were very interested in this line, because there is a real time saving.

Is mobilization to save the shuttle as it was before the crisis, or to maintain some flights to Orly?

Ideally it is to save the ten daily frequencies that we had before. There were already plans to switch to smaller capacity flights of around 100 seats, which was supposed to improve the economy of the route for Air France.

And for the airport what would be the consequence of this deletion?

It would be important, because it is the second line of the airport, behind Roissy with 600,000 passengers. These are very structuring lines. Imagine the difficulties in which we find ourselves with the drastic fall in all flights, if in addition we remove all or part of the shuttle it will become very complicated for us.

Ground markings have been installed at Bordeaux airport to enforce social distancing - Bordeaux Airport

Regarding health measures, what will change for passengers? We will certainly no longer take the plane as we took it two months ago?

Not at all. We are mobilized by the important sanitary measures which are imposed on us, and we set up social distancing with marking on the ground on all the important zones of the airport so that the customers remain distant of a meter. We have installed a lot of plexiglass, especially on the check-in kiosks when the client is in contact too close to the agent. Wearing a mask is also now compulsory in the airport, but there is no measurement of passenger temperature yet.

Will it take much longer to board now?

It's clear. These measures will slow down the entire passenger circuit, since we will do everything to avoid consolidation, and this will impact airport productivity. The most important thing is that people know the rules well, and that they accept this sanitary device, before going to the airport.

Bordeaux airport waiting rooms have been refurbished due to the Covid-19 epidemic - Bordeaux Airport

Could work in progress have continued during containment?

The work in progress has been slowed down but has continued, in particular the construction of our satellite 3 which will be the extension of Hall A, and we are hopeful that it will be delivered during the summer. Regarding the airport projects, this will be discussed soon by the shareholders. We had a very high level of traffic with 7.8 million passengers last year, but this year it will be significantly less, with a recovery that will be slow. We will go back several years, and probably it will take us a few years before returning to the traffic level of 2019. There will be a discussion on the recalibration of the investment program according to traffic, this seems obvious.

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