With its fleet of over 200 aircraft having an average age of just over 15 years,
Air France has a fairly diverse fleet of jets.
These comprise a mix of both widebody and narrowbody jets,
coming from both Airbus and Boeing.
The French flag carrier said goodbye to its last few A340s in 2020. More significantly,
however, was the airline’s decision to say goodbye to all of its A380s in 2020.
Saying goodbye to its inefficient quadjets,
the airline has since welcomed the Airbus A220 into its operations.
With the airline’s continual pursuit of modernization, let’s look at where its fleet
stands as of 2022. In this video, we’ll go through each type of aircraft, any relevant fleet changes,
as well as any incidents and upcoming plans involving the jets…
We should note that this video will only cover Air France’s mainline fleet, and will exclude its
HOP! Subsidiary- which itself operates a few dozen Bombardier and Embraer regional jets.
So, with all of that out of the way, let’s get started….
Starting with the smallest narrowbody- Air France has 12 of the ‘baby bus’
Airbus A318. Interestingly, Air France appears to have shed about two-thirds of this type-
saying goodbye to six over the past year.
These jets now sit at about 16 years of age on average, and mainly operate high-frequency
routes within Europe, or lower-frequency domestic services. While much less efficient
than the newer A220-300s, these small jets have been relatively-problem-free.
However, January 20th and 21st, 2022 were bad days for one particular baby bus…
It was on these days that the A318 registered F-GUGP experienced problems with both of
its engines. with its left engine. The right engine surged on departure the following day,
leading to a return to Paris Orly Airport shortly after departure.
According to The Aviation Herald, the aircraft lost the left-hand electrical
generator on its way from Paris Orly to Algiers. Diverting back to Paris,
Air France had evidently fixed the engine as the jet returned to service the next day.
The A318 operated rotations to Toulouse, Nice, and Marseille, seemingly without incident. However,
on its final service of the day to Perpignan, the aircraft suffered an engine surge on departure.
Passengers reported hearing bangs and seeing multiple streaks of flames.
The plane returned to Orly where it was pulled from service for two weeks.
There’s a little bit less to say about Air France’s A319s
as they appear to have been mostly problem-free in recent times.
The carrier operates 28 of this small A320 family member,
having removed three from service since last year. These jets have a
slightly older average age than the A318s, coming in at around 20 and a half years.
Moving up to the next size, Air France has 42 A320-200s. Following its pattern of retirements,
it appears that the carrier has two fewer A320s than it did last year.
With an average age of just 12 and a half years, this subfleet of jets is relatively young.
However, that hasn’t stopped aviation enthusiasts from speculating on what type of aircraft will
replace these older narrowbody workhorses. Along with airBaltic and Breeze, Air France is one
of the airlines hoping that Airbus will develop a stretch to the A220-300- likely to be named
the A220-500. In terms of passenger capacity, this would probably replace the A320 quite well;
Despite a stretched A220-500 being more efficient and more comfortable for passengers,
the A320 offers more cargo capacity with the ability to hold ULD cargo containers.
This is something absent with the A220’s airframe.
The airline’s parent company, Air France-KLM ordered 100 aircraft of the A320neo family
in December 2021, However, this was for the Dutch KLM side of the group.
Of course, with the two airlines having had a history of aircraft swapping,
it wouldn’t be completely inconceivable for some of these jets to end up in Air
France livery at some point in the far future…
Otherwise, Air France could perhaps place an A320neo family order of its own.
What do you think it will do to replace its 40-plus A320ceos?
Moving up to the largest Airbus narrowbody, Air France has 19
A321ceos. This is one fewer than it had last year.
These jets are getting up there in terms of age, with an average of about
20 years. At the moment, the A321neo and its long-range variants would be
the only suitable modern replacements for these stretched narrowbodies.
With all of this discussion regarding Air France’s older narrowbodies,
let’s turn to its newer narrowbody jet - the Airbus A220-300. It was back in July 2019 that
the carrier announced an order for 60 A220-300s with another 30 options and 30 acquisition rights.
At the time of this video’s production, the carrier has seven of the type.
This is up from zero early last year, as the carrier introduced the type in the Fall of 2021.
Air France’s 8th A220 is undergoing test flights at the time of this video’s production.
These new jets have had a relatively smooth entry into service,
although one particular brand new A220 had some issues early-on.
In November of 2021, the A220 registered as F-HZUC was flying from Paris to Nantes
when the crew encountered some issues and had to divert back to the origin airport.
In a statement, Air France confirmed that there was a technical problem in the form of a cabin
pressurization malfunction, that occurred shortly after takeoff. The airline said that the crew
of the non-commercial crew training flight returned to Paris and landed normally.
More or less, the airline’s A220 operations have been uneventful since then.
Like its A318s and A319s, the A220s are operating flights from Paris to popular,
high-frequency destinations across Europe.
Moving on- and up to the carrier’s widebodies,
Air France’s 15 A330-200s have been flying with the airline for around 20 years now.
None of these aircraft have been retired in the past year.
Instead, they’ve been operating fairly consistent services to destinations in West Africa,
as well as to various French Overseas Territories.
Air France’s newest widebodies are its flagship Airbus A350-900s.
The airline took delivery of its first in September 2019 and now has 14.
This is five more than early in 2021 and the airline expects to take delivery of another 24.
Interestingly, Air France was one airline named as witnessing issues with A350 surface degradation.
While Qatar Airways has been at the forefront of publicly challenging Airbus on this issue
concerning the A350, most other carriers have remained someone quiet.
However, a Reuters investigation in November of 2021 revealed that other carriers had been
experiencing paint and surface problems as well. This included Cathay Pacific,
Lufthansa, and Etihad. Air France was named in the report,
but only in its capacity as maintenance provider for leisure carrier Air Caraibes.
Moving over to the Boeing side, Air France has a total of 64 Boeing 777s. 21 of these are the
777-200ER while 43 are 777-300ERs. While the -300ER fleet has remained constant,
Air France said goodbye to two -200ERs over the course of 2021. This makes sense as this sub-fleet
is about 22 years old. Its 777-300ERs, however, are just 13 and a half years old on average.
Finally, for Air France’s current passenger fleet, we have its 10 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners.
First arriving in 2016, these jets are now an average age of four years old.
We should note that outside of passenger services, the carrier also has two
777-200F aircraft for cargo operations.
While this remains unchanged from last year, it’s worth noting that Air France-KLM
signed a letter of intent (LOI) for four A350 freighters at the end of 2021.
Added to this is a purchase right for another four A350Fs.
All of these freighters would go to Air France.
The order for Airbus’ new freighter offering came as part of Air France-KLM
Group’s major announcement to purchase A320neo aircraft for KLM and Transavia.
Of course, the major difference in Air France's fleet since 2019/2020
is the absence of its 10 A380 superjumbos.
Despite the carrier having a pre-existing plan to retire the double-decker quad jets
before the pandemic, it significantly expedited the phase-out of these aircraft.
So with its final A380 service taking place on March 23rd, 2020, where are these 10 birds now?
Well, we can tell you that the aircraft registered F-HPJB was broken up in February of 2021.
The remaining nine have been sitting parked, mainly at two European
long-term storage sites, With both storage sites operated by the firm Tarmac Aerosave,
seven A380s are located in Tarbes, France, while two are in Teruel, Spain.
While its still quite some time away, it’s exciting to speculate on how Air
France will replace its Boeing 777-300ERs when their time comes.
The airline lost a lot of capacity with the retirement of its A380s and may want
to re-expand its fleet as normal commercial air travel recovers in the coming years.
Could Air France go for the Airbus A350-1000 and eventually become a mainly-Airbus fleet? Or,
could it stick with Boeing and go with the newer and larger 777x variant, the 777-9? Considering
the fact that the airline has its 10 Dreamliners, fleet diversity doesn’t seem to be a huge concern.
However, if this half of the Air France-KLM group wanted to be all-Airbus,
it would probably have an easy time transferring its Dreamliners over to KLM.
What do you think of Air France's fleet? Which jets would you like to
see the carrier operate now or in the future? Let us know in the comments.