EasyJet has made a surprise announcement that it is to close its base at Toulouse airport, citing inflation and slow post-Covid recovery.
Read more: EasyJet announces surprise closure of its base at Toulouse airport
It is not yet known how many flights will be affected – but it raises questions over the future of low-cost flights at regional airports, only months after Ryanair confirmed it is pulling out completely from Bordeaux.
Read more: UK-France flights hit as Ryanair announces it is leaving Bordeaux airport
Spokesman for Unac crew members Gael Leloup said his union aims to show easyJet “that we will not let them do this easily, and that it would be complicated to do again”.
Unac, which is now in negotiations over the base's closure, has filed an indefinite national strike notice although no walkouts have taken place.
Asked if the union is worried about the potential for further base closures to come, Mr Leloup said this is a major concern.
“We fear that if this situation continues, it will send negative signals to other bases. Workers do not want to have to keep following the planes around France.”
He said there will doubtless be fewer easyJet destinations at Toulouse, and “timetables will change, as having a base allows for flights leaving early morning or arriving late at night”.
In future, they are more likely to be in the middle of the day. Mr Leloup said a priority for easyJet is developing its package holidays.
“It allows for longer flights, more profitable than short business flights. Going to Marrakesh or the Canary Islands uses the plane more, although time spent on the ground is the same.
Flight schedules at Toulouse likely to change
Mr Leloup of said it would be “very difficult” to stop the closure of the Toulouse base at this stage.
He suspects a key underlying reason for it is a lack of sufficient supply of new planes, leading easyJet to swap existing planes to places where they think they will make the most money.
The announcement came as a surprise, he said, because, while easyJet said several years ago it was dissatisfied with profits at Toulouse, it had given the impression that things were better after changes were made.
EasyJet is maintaining its Toulouse winter season until March but it is not known how many routes it will keep after that.
As the base has existed for 12 years, many staff have put down roots and have families, he said.
Staff will be invited to move to one of its other bases in France, at Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Nice, Paris Charles de Gaulle or Orly.
EasyJet currently flies to two UK cities from Toulouse – Bristol and London – as well as other European cities and domestically to Paris, Nice, Rennes, Lille and Nantes.
Nice and Bristol are served only by easyJet, so they might no longer be served if not deemed sufficiently ‘major’ or if services are not replaced by other companies, especially Bristol, which is not a base for easyJet planes.
Why are bases closing?
Romain Schulz, in charge of economic affairs at French airlines body Fnam, said pressures on airlines include new taxes, such as on long distance transport, validated by France’s constitutional council in September and affecting larger airports.
Firms fear more tax rises in 2025 despite Fnam calling for a freeze.
The price of aviation fuel has “shot up since the crisis in Ukraine” and inflation and minimum wage levels linked to it have also increased costs.
Ticket prices have risen, causing the market to contract as demand falls, Mr Schulz said.
Ryanair will pull out of Bordeaux from November and says it will move planes to “less expensive airports elsewhere in Europe”.
It serves 40 destinations from there, including Cork and Dublin, Birmingham, Edinburgh, London Stansted and Manchester.
Among these, only Dublin and Manchester are served by other companies.
Mr Schulz said that at Bordeaux the state’s financial auditor had found that, under the previous agreement, Ryanair “was taking an enormous amount of money, so there was not a level-playing field”.
He said: “We have seen other companies come forward since the closure announcement, including Volotea and Transavia [Spanish and French low-cost airlines], which are taking up and developing other lines.
“So, we see that the market can rebalance itself when a big firm leaves.
“At Toulouse, probably for commercial reasons, easyJet has decided it will be more profitable to base its planes elsewhere. We hope that even if it leaves, another company will support certain lines.”
Why are bases important?
Airlines use bases to store planes and site crew jobs.
In the case of Toulouse, two easyJet planes and 125 employees, and at Bordeaux, three planes and around 100 jobs.
A base typically increases the frequency of flights and the destinations an airline offers to and from a site.
EasyJet says it “remains committed to serving Toulouse as a destination and will continue to fly [there], continuing to connect it with major cities within France and internationally”.
At Bordeaux, the closure was linked to a rise in fees set to be charged to Ryanair.
This came after state financial auditor, the Cour des Comptes, criticised the site for its “opaque, potentially discriminatory and disproportionate incentive aids received by certain companies through special contracts”.
Such criticisms have been made about many French regional or local airports.
One aircrew union, SNPNCFO, said Bordeaux had “rolled out the red carpet” to Ryanair, but was now seeking to charge “airport costs that match the market price”.
The airport told The Connexion that Ryanair withdrawing totally had not been “wholly unexpected”, although it had been their “worst-case scenario”.
Read more: Bordeaux airport: ‘Ryanair pulling out was our worst-case scenario’
It will seek to diversify, aiming to reduce low-cost flights from 72% to around 60%.
It predicts up to three years of lower traffic as it makes up for the loss.
The airport is also starting work on a €100million revamp.
French airports reliant on low-cost flights
There are more than 70 airports in metropolitan France.
A report by the Union des Aéroports Français (UAF) on the year 2023 said their reliance on low-cost airlines had generally increased compared to before the pandemic, accounting for more than 70% of traffic for 17 airports, up from 11.
This reliance is greatest among small local airports.
Read more: Is Bergerac Airport too dependent on low-cost airlines?
It also referred to “difficulties with domestic flights” as the main reason for slow recovery at Toulouse – down 19% in passengers between 2019 and 2023 – but it said the sector in general had an average 7% fewer passengers and 11% fewer flights compared to 2019.
At Toulouse, easyJet’s 20 lines, serving 1.7 million passengers in 2023, are two-thirds domestic.
Nicolas Paulissen, general delegate for UAF, said the cases of Toulouse and Bordeaux depended on the commercial strategies of each firm.
However, airports know firms must “fill the planes” and costs have to be as low as possible.
Mr Paulissen agreed that a drop in business travel and the 2032 TGV plans were probably contributing factors at Toulouse.
He said UAF is worried about rising touchdown costs for airlines in France, in which “taxation weighs heavily”, as do payments for airport security checks.
“Margins are small for companies, at around €5 per seat,” he said, adding that large companies plan their commercial strategies on a worldwide basis, and can base their planes where they wish.
“Airports such as Toulouse or Lyon will have to develop more medium-distance services and more aimed at leisure and visiting friends and families.
“The least dynamic areas are domestic and business-class flights, so not, for example, services typically used by Britons in the south-west.”
