Air Seychelles ceases operations to Paris, London and Italy as from 10-Jan-2012
28-Dec-2011 Air Seychelles launched its London operations on 26th October 1983 using a British Caledonian Airways DC10 aircraft to fly the first international inaugural flight of the airline. The Rome service was launched in March 1993 and flights to Paris started off in December 1996.
As part of its restructuring and repositioning process to turn into regional airline, Air Seychelles has announced that it will be ending its European operations to Paris, London , Rome and Milan. Three Paris flights were initially to operate until end of March 2011.
Next year, Air Seychelles will be operating only to Mauritius and Johannesburg using a B767-300 aircraft.
Air Seychelles CEO, Bram Steller has said: " Passenger bookings to the three European destinations have continue to drop significantly after January 9, 2012 and we have had to take a commercial decision to cease operations to these three European destinations as current bookings would not by any means even pay for variable, out of pocket costs.
However, he explained that Air Seychelles was in on-going discussions for a code share agreement with Etihad Airways to use an Air Seychelles aircraft on the Mahe-Abu Dhabi-Mahe route to link with Etihad's international operations to and from Europe and start linking up to their Asian and Australian destinations as well.
With regard, to passenger traffic from Italy, Blue Panorama , a private Italian airline anticipates that it will be operating flights between Italy and Seychelles soon.
Mr Steller also announced that Air Seychelles and its shareholder are in the process to finalise the return of its three Boeing aircraft to the lessor.
For its planned regional operations next year, Air Seychelles will be acquiring a narrow-body Boeing 737-800 or an Airbus 320 that will eventually see the national airline spread its operations to India, East Africa and the Indian Ocean.