Air France has announced it will introduce two additional long-haul destinations to its route network during summer 2013 with a new seasonal link to Minneapolis-St Paul in the US and its first link to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. This will further strengthen the SkyTeam alliance’s presence at one of its US gateway hubs and will bring direct competition to the existing Malaysia Airlines service from Kuala Lumpur to Paris.

The new Paris CDG - Minneapolis-St Paul route will initially be operated on a five times weekly basis from May 21, 2013 but will be boosted to a daily schedule from June 17, 2013 until September 1, 2013. Air France will use a 275-seat Airbus A340-300 on the route, equipped to carry 30 passengers in Business, 21 in Premium Economy and 224 in Economy.

Minneapolis-St Paul is an important hub for Delta Air Lines, inherited following its takeover of Northwest Airlines. It has been linked to Paris since April 2008 when Northwest introduced a daily Airbus A330-300 service. Delta took over responsibility for the route the following year and switched to using a Boeing 767. It is currently scheduled to use an A330, a -200 variant this time, on the route but is expected to once again utilise a 767 from March next year.

The new Air France flight will complement the existing Delta operation and will actually be flown under the auspices of the transatlantic joint venture between Air France-KLM, Alitalia and Delta, offering additional connecting opportunities between networks in Europe and North America. According to Air France a key part of its partnership is to enhance hub-to-hub connectivity. “The partner airlines are choosing to concentrate their capacity on routes linking together their hubs,” it said.

Minneapolis-St Paul will be one of eleven US destinations that the French national carrier will serve directly from Paris CDG in summer 2013. Through its partnership with Delta it said it will be able to offer transit passengers connections to 118 destinations in the United States and Canada, with 452 daily departures. In 2011, an estimated 45,000 O&D passengers flew between Paris CDG and Minneapolis-St Paul, around 42 per cent of which are already flying on the ‘AF’ code on Delta’s existing flight.

The introduction of direct flights from Paris to Kuala Lumpur will once again bring competition to the offering of Malaysia Airlines between the two cities. Air France will operate a three times weekly link from April 22, 2013 using a Boeing 777-200 configured with 247 seats - 4 in La Première, 49 in Business, 24 in Premium Economy and 170 in Economy. The flight will operate as an overnight sector in each direction, Air France confirms.

Malaysia Airlines first introduced direct services between Kuala Lumpur and Paris CDG in June 1997, initially on a three times weekly schedule using a Boeing 777. Capacity was boosted by around a third in April 1998 with the arrival of the 747-400 on the route and frequencies have subsequently been lifted to meet increasing passenger demand. The route reverted back to a 777 in 2006 as a daily service was introduced.

In February 2011 the arrival of AirAsia X into this city market notably changed the dynamic of the link. The Asian carrier’s low-cost offering into Paris Orly helped to stimulate demand between the two cities with O&D demand growing by 60 per cent in the year. However, changing market conditions, the European economic situation and the use of the inefficient four-engined A340-300 on the route, resulted in AirAsia X closing the link earlier this year, alongside other flights into Europe.

Air France will hope to tap into this additional demand and will hope its alternative overnight option will help it attract additional customers, including connecting traffic across its wider European network. Malaysia Airlines only accounts for around 57 per cent of the total O&D demand on the route with the rest of the passenger connecting on indirect services, mainly via the major Middle East hubs, suggesting a good potential for a new network offering.

Air France actually already has a presence in Kuala Lumpur through the operations of its sister carrier KLM from its Amsterdam Schiphol hub. KLM has a daily service from the Dutch capital, a market of around 91,000 O&D passengers in 2011. This is a 32 per cent share of the demand, behind Malaysia Airlines which holds a 54 per cent share of the demand.