Corsairfly

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Corsairfly

IATA SS	ICAO CRL	Callsign Corsair
Founded		1981 (as Corse Air International)
Hubs		Orly Airport, Paris
Alliance		TUI Airlines
Fleet size		10 (2006)
Destinations		>60
Parent company		TUI Airlines (TUI Group)
Headquarters		Rungis, France
Key people		Hervé Pierret
Website: http://www.corsairfly.com

Boeing 747 Corsairfly

Corsairfly (IATA: SS, ICAO: CRL, and Callsign: Corsair) is an airline based in France. It was formerly known as Corsair. It carries out regular and chartered flights, although most of the chartered flights are operated for French tour operator Nouvelles Frontières. It operates international charter air services worldwide, serving over 60 destinations in Europe, the French overseas territories, Africa, North America and Southeast Asia.

1 History
2 Services
3 Fleet
4 External links

[edit] History

The old corsair livery

The airline was established in 1981 and started operations on 17 May 1981 as Corse Air International. It was founded by the Corsican Rossi family and was acquired by Nouvelles Frontieres, a French tour operator, in 1990 and the name was changed to "Corsair". Worldwide traffic rights were obtained in 1991. In 2000 TUI AG, the world's leading tour operator group, took over Corsair. In 2004, Corsair aircraft were repainted with the colours of TUI, blue fuselage with the TUI-logo, like its sister airlines. At the end of 2005 the TUI Group, renamed the airlines from its alliance, due to its latest marketing strategy, and Corsair became Corsairfly. The airline holds the record for most seats on a passenger aircraft (587 seats, on its 747-400's). On December 14, 2006 TUI announced that all its airlines will be rebranded as TUIfly by 2008.

[edit] Services

Corsairfly operates the following scheduled services (as of January 2005):

Domestic scheduled destinations: Bordeaux, Brest, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Paris and Toulouse.

International scheduled destinations: Agadir, Antananarivo, Fes, Fort-de-France, Marrakech, Mauritius, Mombasa, Moncton, Montréal, Nairobi, Palma de Mallorca, Pointe-à-Pitre, St Denis, St Maarten, Oran.

Corsairfly also operates many charter flights, as well as scheduled service to resort areas. Such destinations include: Abidjan, Cancun, Cayenne, Cayo Coco, Djibouti, Havana, Lome, Nouméa, and Varadero . In Europe and Northern Africa, the following destinations are served: Athens, Ankara, Cairo, Cork, Dublin, Edinburgh, Istanbul, İzmir, Lisbon, London, Rome, Tel Aviv, Tunis, and Venice.

The airline will launch weekly seasonal service for the Toulouse-Fort de France route using Boeing 747-400 in December 2006.

Corsair's intercontinental network used to be much more expanded in the late 1990's as the airline had profitable scheduled services from Paris-Orly to Bangkok, New York JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tahiti. But due to the effects of the 9/11 attacks which deeply hit the airline industry, Corsair is no longer flying to these major destinations, despite being once the only French airline that was able to compete with Air France on these profitable routes.

Since then, Corsair repositioned itself as the airline to French overseas territories in the Caribbeans and the Indian Ocean in order to retake the lucrative market left by defunt airline and former competitor Air Lib. The airline flies daily to Fort de France, Pointe a Pitre, Saint Martin and Saint Denis de la Reunion with its large fleet of Boeing 747-400.

In 2007, Corsairfly will inaugurate its long awaited scheduled services from Paris-Orly to Port Louis (Mauritius). The airline has been waiting since the late 1990's to obtain rights to operate that route which used to be a monopoly between Air France and Air Mauritius. ArabGoair.jpg