Paris Orly airport to reopen with skeleton service after three-month shutdown

Orly airport south of Paris is to reopen Friday June 26 after shutting down on March 31 amid the coronavirus pandemic, but with just a fraction of its normal flights.

Orly airport on 30 March, 2020. © AFP

A plane to Porto, Portugal is scheduled to take off at 6:00 am (04:00 GMT), and around 25 destinations are to be served via 70 takeoffs and landings, compared with 600 a day before the coronavirus crisis grounded aircraft worldwide.

Airlines including Air France, Transavia, EasyJet, Vueling and Air Caraïbes account for most of the traffic at Orly, flying to the Caribbean, Reunion Island, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Iceland and Croatia, among others.

D-4 before the reopening of Paris-#Orly. All the airport community comes together to welcome you in confidence from Friday. pic.twitter.com/Z91KdEjfHV

— Paris Aéroport (@ParisAeroport) June 22, 2020

On Friday, officials expect around 8,000 passengers to pass through Orly's four terminals, less than 10 percent of the daily average of around 90,000.

Increased traffic in July will depend on whether Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia reopen their borders.

"We are facing an extremely brutal and long crisis, and we are bracing for a resumption that will be somewhat long, if not extremely long," Alain Battisti, head of France's national federation of commercial aviation (Fnam) said Tuesday.

(with AFP)