Aeris (airline)

Aeris was an airline company based in France. It was founded in 1999 and was defunct in 2003 after it became bankrupt.

Aeris could be viewed as a low cost carrier. According to Aeris' marketing director Alexandre Scherer, the aim is to lure business travellers from small-and-medium-sized companies away from the national giant. Perpignan is one of these battlegrounds, with Air France operating four daily round-trips from Paris, and Aeris three.

The BBC reported on the apparent success of Aeris in 2003 the report is below:"Waiting in the departure lounge for the 13:25 Aeris flight to Orly, Hadji Farida, 25, from Lille, suggests that the low-cost company's tactics may be working. Her employer, TV channel France 3, decided to send her to Perpignan on Aeris to save money."My Aeris flights were 200 euros cheaper than if I'd gone with Air France. So it's not just smaller companies that want to take advantage of this.""

However despite the apparent demand for low-cost domestic services, Aeris only been managing to fill 60% of its seats on average during its last 6 months of operation. In 2003 The company said it was improving, but eyebrows were raised at the end of August when it missed a government deadline to raise extra capital. This was then extended in last August 2003, with the airline hoping to raise 15m euros in the following weeks from a mixture of foreign and domestic investors.

Aeris began operation with a small fleet of Boeing 737-300 aircraft and 767-300 aircraft. These aircraft were generally operated in an all-economy configuration.

Aeris operated a large number of schedual service with fixed timetables. However the airline soon branched out into charter services.

This airlines operated to a large number of destinations in and outside Europe.

References

External links

*fr icon wayback|http://www.aeris.fr|Aeris official website