Spain’s Volotea scoops French domestic PSO contract

Volotea (V7, Asturias) has been awarded a four-year Public Service Obligation (PSO) contract to operate the Paris Orly-Lourdes/Tarbes domestic route in France starting on June 1, 2022.

The airline will ply the route 2x daily on a year-round basis, using a 156-seat A319-100. The contracting organisation, local business and administration consortium Pyrenia, has not published the results of the tender yet let alone the subsidy awarded to the airline. Amelia (NL, Paris Le Bourget) and Chalair Aviation (CE, Caen) also submitted competing proposals.

Volotea will take over the route from HOP! (A5, Paris Orly), which currently operates it 18x weekly using an E145 under the Air France (AF, Paris CDG) code. The current four-year PSO contract is worth up to EUR2.4 million euros (USD2.7 million).

Currently, the only other operator serving Lourdes/Tarbes is Ryanair (FR, Dublin Int’l), which operates exclusively international routes out of the airport.

Volotea said its decision to apply for the PSO was a part of its focus on the French domestic market. Although the carrier is headquartered in Spain, its two main markets are Italy (61.2% of total Volotea’s scheduled departure capacity) and France (23.1%). In terms of the French domestic market, Volotea has a 3% market share.