On Wednesday morning at the Luxembourg airport passenger terminal, Chalair Aviation announced details of the new regular flight service linking the Grand Duchy with Lyon in France, with the first flight on 28 September.
As announced on 12 August, the French company will be offering its third international destination following Cologne and Barcelona, with five weekday (return) flights between Lyon-Saint Exupéry airport and Luxembourg's own Findel airport. The flights will be operated by Beechcraft 1900 aircrafts, providing 19 seats.
From Monday to Thursday, flights will leave Lyon at 11:00 (not 10:45 as initially indicated), arriving just under an hour and a half later in Luxembourg at 12:20. Return flights will depart Luxembourg at 16:00, landing back in Lyon at 17:20. On Fridays, the flights will start at 15:50 from Lyon, arriving at 15:10, with the flight back scheduled for 17:40 with an arrival time of 19:00.
The Chalair airline was founded in 1986, and has previously provided flights to only national destinations. However, the Lyon-Luxembourg line represents a further expansion in its scope, following the creation of a direct route to Cologne-Bonn in April 2015. Regular flights started in 1994 when flying between Le Mans and Eindhoven, and between Cherbourg and Orly. The Rennes - Bordeaux route followed and, last year, Limoges was linked to Barcelona, Nice, Lyon and Ajaccio (Corsica). Lyon also services Cologne (Germany) and now Luxembourg.
Lyon is part of the second largest economic region in France (Rhone-Alpes) comprising 39,000 businesses and institutions and 5 major competitiveness clusters.
Johan Vanneste, CEO of Luxembourg Airport, explained that this announcement is part of the expansion of Luxembourg airport, further to the changes to the recent changes to the retail and restaurant offerings. In addition, the construction to link to Terminal B will be underway shortly.
Yvan Hervé of Chalair introduced the company as having 29 years experience of air travel, including a 2011 expansion into Africa - Uganda, Niger and Gabon. The company has 4 Lease-Fly jets and has operated corporate flights for mining, oil and gas exploration companies in Niger and Mauritania. The company also provides flight training on Beechcraft planes using its simulator in Toronto, Canada.
The airline announced a promotional fare of €131 one-way, with multi-tickets possible too (abonnements). This includes 15kg of luggage. See www.chalair.eu.
The distance between the two cities by road is 520km and normally takes 5 hours to drive, breaks excluded.
Chalair Aviation is partner of the Flying Blue frequent flyer programme of Air France-KLM.
Photo by Geoff Thompson
