French Bee bets on US expansion in face of new transatlantic competition

Leisure airline French Bee is bullish on its business to the US, even as JetBlue Airways and Norse Atlantic Airways prepare to ratchet up competition on popular transatlantic routes to Paris. Privately-held French Bee is in the midst of its own US expansion. The airline will begin new flights to Miami from its Paris Orly base on December 15. And next year, the carrier plans to expand its offerings to Los Angeles and Newark ahead of what CEO Marc Rochet thinks will be a banner summer with “very strong” travel demand. “We’ve been a bit surprised,” Rochet said in an interview on travelers’ seemingly insatiable appetite to fly places on both sides of the Atlantic. Ticket sales, he said, are split about equally between both France and the US. In addition to Los Angeles, Miami, and Newark, French Bee serves San Francisco in the US, as well as the islands of Reunion and Tahiti. Robust travel demand is not unique to French Bee. Both European and US carriers are seeing a similar phenomenon with executives from International Airlines Group to KLM and United Airlines also saying the same thing. They cite everything from people being unable to travel for nearly two years during the pandemic, to the strong US dollar that makes it cheaper for Americans — and anyone earning dollars — to travel to Europe. The outlook has the industry confident that it could buck the economic tide that may be headed for recession.<br/>