Air France Confirms Bata Launch Date

Posted 04/08/2011

Air France is to further expand its African network with the addition of a second destination in Equatorial Guinea this autumn.  The airline will offer a twice weekly link to Bata, an Atlantic Ocean Port City and the economic capital of the African country with a growing population.  The flights will begin on September 29 and will be operated as an extension of Air France’s existing Paris CDG – Malabo service.

Air France has been seeking to serve Bata for offer a year and had originally scheduled flights to commence in June 2010, but the Equatorial Guinea Government blocked its expansion.  The airline will be using an Airbus A319 of its Dedicate fleet with 28 Business Class and 51 Voyageur Economy seats.  These aircraft are perfectly suited to niche markets and offer a product designed to make travel easier for oil industry and construction professionals and business people which is tailored to the specific expectations of certain African markets.

The French national carrier is the largest European airline in Equatorial Guinea and carried an estimated 11,000 O&D passengers on its existing daily flights between Paris CDG and Malabo in the past 12 months.  Air Europa, Iberia and Lufthansa also offer non-stop links to Malabo, the Spanish carriers providing links to Madrid and the German national airline a three times weekly service to Frankfurt via Abuja, Nigeria.  Cronos Airlines is currently the only operator to offer scheduled links to Bata with a twice daily service from Malabo using a BAe 146-200.

---

With effect from March 19, 2012 the Breaking News coverage on Routesonline is powered by Airline Route.  For more analysis on these stories please read our expanded coverage of the key stories of the day in The HUB. 

You can also keep up to date with the latest network development news by following the live updates from @Routesonline, @TheHUBRoutes, @RouteExchange and @airlineroute on Twitter.  While all the latest news from our events can be seen by searching the #RoutesAfrica, #RoutesAmericas, #RoutesAsia, #RoutesCIS, #RoutesEurope and #WorldRoutes hashtags.

All material is copyright of UBM Aviation Routes but the views expressed are not necessarily the views of UBM Aviation Routes and the company shall therefore not be liable for the contents of any article that appears on the site.  Although the best efforts have been taken in collecting and checking the material we can not and do not warrant that the information contained in this product is complete or accurate and does not assume and hereby disclaims liability to any person for any loss of damage caused by errors or omissions.

PLEASE NOTE: From March 7, 2012 schedule data for all news stories has been extracted from OAG Schedules iNET; All GDS data is based on a live GDS update on the day of publication; Traffic data extracted from IATA BSP system for the year ending December 2011.  All information is subject to change.