Air France is to introduce the Airbus A380 on its flights between its Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport hub and Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez in Mexico City from the start of next year. This will be the first scheduled air link into Mexico using the Super Jumbo and will increase the A380 network of the European carrier to nine destinations.
The French national carrier will introduce the A380 to Mexico City from January 2016 on an initial three times weekly basis, substituting a Boeing 747-400 that presently serves the route. From March 2016 the A380 will operate on a daily basis, significantly boosting available capacity with a four class product offering - La Première, Business, Premium Economy and Economy.
The new deployment was confirmed following the signing of a partnership agreement between Frédéric Gagey, chairman and chief executive officer of Air France, and Gilberto López Meyer, general director of Mexico’s Civil Aviation Authority on July 16, 2015, formalising the arrival of the A380 to Mexico.
“Using our A380 on flights to Mexico this winter means we can improve our offering for this line and contribute even more to promoting tourism and increasing the number of interactions between Mexico and France," said Frédéric Gagey.
Air France currently operates ten A380s and has two further aircraft on order. This summer the carrier is using the 516-seat airliner on flights from Paris to eight destinations: Los Angeles, New York-JFK, San Francisco, Washington, Abidjan, Johannesburg, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Together with its sister carrier, KLM and SkyTeam partners, the Air France-KLM Group already has the largest schedule of flights into Mexico from Europe. During the summer 2015 season, the Air France-KLM Group is offering up to twenty-three weekly flights to Mexico from Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam-Schiphol, including seven frequencies operated by Aeroméxico from Paris to the Mexican capital under a codeshare with Air France.
The airline has a dominant position in this market as all of its own flights also codeshare with Aeroméxico, thereby providing passengers with a wide variety of connecting flight options throughout the domestic network of the Mexican airline within the country. But, it is not just in Mexico that Air France-KLM has a strong presence, buts also across the wider the region of Central and Southern America and the Caribbean where it serves 27 destinations with over 200 flights a week from Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam-Schiphol.
Although this will be the first scheduled deployment of the A380 into Mexico, it is not the first time that Air France has used the type in the country having operated a single one-off flight with the SuperJumbo between Paris and Cancún in November 2013. This special service was part of the carrier’s 80th anniversary celebrations, as well as Grupo ASUR's 15th anniversary of operations at Cancún International Airport.
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