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Comment by prostoalex | Hacker News Reader

The problem is hub-and-spoke approach of many national carriers (Air France included). Covid travel restrictions aside, one can buy an air itinerary that gets them from NYC to Bordeaux (or Nice, or Nantes, or Toulouse, or Marseille, or Lyon, or Strasbourg) all via CDG.

That airport train station is set up to transport the passengers from the airport to the city center, not inter-city travel.

Air France is right to complaint - banning all those short flights just shifts the juiciest international city pairs to a nearby hub, and what used to be NYC-CDG-BOD will become NYC-LHR-BOD or NYC-MAD-BOD, served by a different airline.

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That's not fully correct. CDG and ORY have integrated (or close enough) high speed rail stations that serve other large cities, although that's probably not a great bet.

Most importantly, however, the law being discussed doesn't ban connecting flights. So a NYC -> Le Mans (say) would be allowed to fly through CDG, even though Le Mans is at around one hour by high-speed rail.

However, as there would be less traffic on these routes, I do expect some of them to be more expensive or even dropped altogether.

There's also a provision for "zero carbon" flights which would be allowed to operate on short distances.

The actual law (in French): https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/15/textes/l15b3875_pr...

> CDG and ORY have integrated (or close enough) high speed rail stations that serve other large cities

Uh ? Since when and where ?

CDG (North of Paris) is on the railway that joins Brussels, Paris, Rennes, Tours, Bordeaux and a number of other major places in France. ORY has a connection with Paris suburban railway network, no direct access to one distance train.

Right. ORY is very close to Massy TGV (2 stops or so on the suburban train) which goes to the west (Rennes) and south (not sur if Bordeaux or Lyon or both).

> That airport train station is set up to transport the passengers from the airport to the city center, not inter-city travel.

Which is why in France and other countries, train stations at airports have high speed rail service to other cities. It's the case at CDG( Paris), Lyon St Exupéry, Amsterdam Schiphol. That way you get there via plane, switch to high-speed rail, and get to your final destination.

NYC-MAD-BOD is a bit closer... My advice is to avoid transferring at CDG at all costs, but LHR is slightly worse imo.

Maybe one day NYC-YUL-BOD will be a valid option to shave off a few hundred miles in the air, but that is another border.

AMS is currently a very typical option as there are links between Amsterdam and all major French cities. I used to take the LAX-AMS-BOD quite often before the pandemic.

Yeah, it’s an EU route from Toronto that was never cut during the pandemic. I think it hasn’t dropped from daily. I guess there’s enough freight (or bailouts?) to keep it afloat.

But it ground my gears that KLM was still bussing from the gate to some aircraft to keep up their drive-through ops efficiency.

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