The new year will see more flights to and from France, new ferries and the long awaited roll-out of the SNCF's new TGVs. Here are the major changes for rail, ferry and air travel in 2025.
Flights
These include Paris to Denver, Phoenix and Orlando by Air France; Lyon to Newcastle, Rennes to Manchester, Strasbourg to London, Bordeaux to Birmingham and Paris to Newcastle by easyJet; Paris to Montreal by low-cost airline French Bee; Nice to Washington DC by United Airlines; Bordeaux to Cork by Aer Lingus; and Birmingham to Beauvais by Ryanair.
Nîmes and Tours airports are set to offer new flights to European destinations, such as Nice, Barcelona and Geneva.
The flights will launch from May and will be operated by L’Odyssey.
Passengers on some Air France flights will no longer have access to a free meal when flying, as the airline experiments with a ‘buy on board’ catering service.
Low-cost airline Ryanair announced that it would stop operations at 10 regional French airports if the government went ahead with a plan to triple a tax on air tickets, eg. from €2.63 to €9.50 for economy class, from January 1. Ryanair currently operates in 22 French airports.
Read more: EasyJet announces nine new flight routes from France including to UK
This is not, however, now expected after the fall of the Barnier government and several firms that had already started factoring in the expected increase into tickets will have to pay refunds.
From April, Ryanair will organise flights from a national French airport for the first time.
It will offer twice daily flights from Paris-Orly to Bergamo and Bratislava. Routes to the UK and Ireland might be established later.
Ryanair is also phasing out paper tickets by April, which means that all passengers will require an online boarding pass.
EasyJet announced that it will close its base at Toulouse-Blagnac airport, after 10 years, from this spring.
Air France has announced it will no longer serve Strasbourg-Entzheim from March, citing economic and environmental reasons.
People will be able to travel by train and plane using one ticket in a partnership between Eurostar and airline alliance SkyTeam, which includes Air France-KLM. Tickets are expected to go on sale in the first half of the year.
Renovation and enlargement at Nice Côte d’Azur’s Terminal 2 are set to be largely complete by the summer.
Ferries
Two new hybrid GNL (natural liquefied gas) ferries, less polluting than traditional ships, will be joining the Brittany Ferries fleet.
The Saint-Malo ship will link Saint-Malo with Portsmouth from February, and the Guillaume de Normandie will join Caen and Portsmouth from April onwards.
Three weekly return sailings from Rosyth in Scotland to Dunkirk, France are to begin in the spring, run by DFDS.
Guernsey chose Condor Ferries, a subsidiary of Brittany Ferries, to operate routes from the island for the next 15 years from March.
It announced on its website an “improved market for French visitors, in particular day trippers” and a “good degree of frequency between UK and Guernsey and Guernsey and France in the peak and mid-peak periods”. It says there will be no significant pricing changes.
Jersey has chosen DFDS.
Rail
For the first time, a regional rail line has been handed to a private firm, Transdev, rather than historic train operator SNCF.
The Nice-Marseille line will be managed by Transdev for 10 years.
The firm unveiled the trains, which will be more comfortable and include greater facilities such as bicycle places. The number of trains per day will be doubled.
Read more: Remember: New TGV luggage limits now apply in France
New TGV trains, named TGV M, will be put into service in the second half of the year. The new trains will go at the same speed (320 km/h) as previous TGVs but will be more eco-friendly and able to carry 100 extra passengers.
They were supposed to launch in time for the Paris Olympics. SNCF ordered 115 of the trains, to be delivered over 10 years.
Read more: SNCF comes fifth in European ranking of best train companies
Major works are to begin on the Paris-Toulouse line from April, affecting daytime rail travel between the cities.
The line, which passes through Orléans and Limoges, will see exceptional works done in the daytime, so overnight international freight using the line can maintain schedules.
Between April and August, there will be no trains between 10:00 and 15:00, and no trains between 9:30 and 17:30 from August until early 2026.
Repairs will also be done on rail bridges and tracks in and around Metz (Moselle), as well as on lines going up to the Luxembourg border.
Much of the work will be done in the early hours, but some is scheduled on summer evenings.
Italian operator Trenitalia is to begin operating trains between Paris and Marseille, also serving Nice, Genoa and Milan, four years after it began running Paris-Lyon services.
It is reportedly considering launching more services in France in the future.
SNCF will gradually increase the number of seats on its high-speed TGV Atlantique services in 2025 and 2026.
It first plans to increase them by 300,000 across services that serve Pays de la Loire by the end of 2025, and then introduce a further 600,000 seats in 2026.
The measures are designed to ease overcrowding and increase passenger comfort. SNCF’s low-cost TGV service, Ouigo, is set to run services to 15 new destinations across France by 2027.
In 2025, Hendaye (via Bordeaux), Dax, Bayonne, Biarritz and Saint Jean-de-Luz will be launched.
A single ticket system for the whole of the EU has been proposed by an EU transport commissioner, which could mean having just one ticket for your destination, even if using different train services in different countries.
Eurostar will not reinstate its two stops in Kent until at least 2026. Reinstatement in 2025 of the stop at Calais is also not planned.
A luxury round-France rail adventure, conceived by the team behind the Puy du Fou historical theme park, will launch this year.
Called Le Grand Tour, the six-day, five-night trip will have weekly departures from Gare de l’Est in Paris and take in some of the country’s most famous destinations, including Beaune, Carcassonne and Arcachon.
It will have Belle époque-style carriages and passengers are promised a kind of ‘moving theatre’, with a storyline unfolding during the trip.
Other transport
Several transport operators including SNCF, Transdev and RATP, will, in the case of people found travelling without a valid ticket, be able to demand proof of address, and verify it is real, using data from other services, such as the tax offices.
A single ticket for the metro, RER (trains from the suburbs that run through Paris) and Transilien (regional trains) will cost €2.50, regardless of destination.
This will represent an increase of 35 cents for metro tickets but a decrease of up to €2.50 for RERs and Transiliens.
Tickets for buses and trams will cost €2 if you buy in advance and €2.50 if you buy your ticket onboard. The carnet of 10 single-use tickets on the Parisian network, which can be purchased at metro stations, will also be discontinued from this date.
In Paris, nine closed stations on the T1 tramway line will reopen on March 31.
A national express coach plan is set to be announced in the first months of 2025 to reduce use of cars, especially for the estimated 15 million people who do not have access to public transport.
The Transport Ministry says this is aimed at trips of between 30 and 50km, with a key market being those who need daily transport into cities from homes in the surrounding countryside.
Rather than standard buses, the new service is set to involve comfortable coaches with USB sockets and wifi. The cost of a ticket has yet to be announced.
