French Bee moves Canadian stopover to Toronto

French Bee (BF, Paris Orly) has announced that all of its flights between Paris Orly and Papeete will operate with a refuelling stopover at Toronto Pearson airport rather than the usual Vancouver Int’l through October 4, 2021.

The carrier did not provide any rationale for the change. Flightradar24 ADS-B data indicates the first flight to use the new routing did so on July 30, 2021.

French Bee, which is a unit of Groupe Dubreuil and thus a sister carrier of Air Caraibes (TX, Pointe à Pitre) and Air Caraibes Atlantique (CAJ, Paris Orly), does not carry passengers to Canada from either French Polynesia or mainland France. Because of that, its 3x weekly services to Papeete are treated as domestic flights, making them the longest domestic service in the world. In spring 2020, during the first global wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the airline operated the route non-stop on a cargo-only flight with a limited payload.

The airline operates four A350-900s and deploys them out of Orly also to St. Denis de la Réunion and New York Newark. It hopes to restart services to San Francisco, CA on October 4, 2021.