Corsair builds on its strenghts

The airline’s new chief operating officer, Eric Trautmann, along with Pape Maël Diop, GM Aéroports du Sénégal, organised a joint press conference at which they celebrated more than a quarter-of-a-century of flights into the country that operate at a load factor of around 90%.
Corsair operates regular flights from Paris to the Caribbean, Canada, the Indian Ocean (Reunion, Mauritius, Mayotte and Madagascar), Africa (Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire) and – since May – Cuba. The Indian Ocean destinations currently account for 45% of its business, the majority of which is to and from Reunion.
The company has recently re-stated its ambition to step up its development in the Indian Ocean regional market in parallel with its long-haul business. Consolidation of regional flights should facilitate economic exchanges and promote combined tourism throughout the Indian Ocean islands.
Today, Corsair’s long-haul international flights to the Indian Ocean are usually overnight. So, instead of leaving its aircraft on the ground during the day, Corsair intends to increase its operational efficiency, creating extra traffic.
Corsair has already developed this concept from the island of Reunion, from which it now operates a regular twice-weekly flight to the French island of Mayotte, north of Madagascar.
“We opened this route to see how the market responded and we are very satisfied,” said Trautmann. “So we have decided to expand the use of this type of operation within the region.”
To this end, the airline now operates a weekly flight from Reunion to Madagascar and Trautmann believes that this model is transferable to other routes within Africa, including Senegal.
He concluded: “We are thinking about opening further African routes in 2018 for both tourism and business passengers and any decision to modernise our fleet will be made at the beginning of 2018.”
To maintain low fares, Corsair has chosen to retain its three 533-seat Boeing 747-400s, with refurbished cabins, until 2020/21. It also operates two Airbus A330-200s and a pair of A330-300s.