Air France and SNCF have offered Train + Air service for nearly 30 years with the network spanning 33 services. Well, it seems that this is growing further, with the additional eight routes.
These include:
- Aix-en-Provence, Arras, Laval and Lille Flandre: to Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports.
- Perpignan : to Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport
This extension of the network increases the number of routes offered by Air France as part of the “Train + Air” service to 41, on departure from 22 train stations:
Aix-en-Provence TGV, Angers Saint-Laud, Arras, Avignon TGV, Bordeaux Saint-Jean, Champagne-Ardenne TGV, Le Mans, Laval, Lille Europe, Lille Flandres, Lorraine TGV, Lyon Part-Dieu, Marseille Saint-Charles, Montpellier Saint-Roch, Nantes, Nîmes, Perpignan, Poitiers, Rennes, Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, Strasbourg and Valence TGV.
Aix-en-Provence gains double coverage from Lille, with both Lille Europe and Lille Flanders served.
With the Air France “Train + Air” ticket combination, passengers have a single reservation for their entire journey and a guaranteed seat on the next available flight or TGV INOUI train, free of charge, if their flight or train arrives late.
Since 2022, their journey has been fully digitized, so that passengers can now check-in online before departure, for their entire journey, including train travel.
For those Air France customers travelling in the La Première or Business Class Cabin, they can travel in the first class section on SNCF trains.
Beyond France
In addition to this network in France, Air France and KLM offer a combined ticket service on routes departing from Brussels-Midi station (to Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol) and Antwerp-Central (to Amsterdam Schiphol only).
Growth to the Multi-Modal Mix
Last week I covered the latest update from United Airlines, Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn which are increasing their Air-Rail coverage links, and it is going to see Air France further increase its coverage with SNCF.
The sustainability agenda in France is more pressured, with airlines made to drop some routes due to environmental concerns. As such, there is a push for multi-modal travel such as this to aid travellers from the airport to a train and onto their final destination.
Mixes like this allow for a passenger to get off an aircraft, board a train and arrive in a city or town, ready for the last-mile part of their travel.
And yes, I would love a lot more airlines to partner with train companies to offer these multi-modal travel options.
Rarely, does travel end at an airport.
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is it similar to LH’s rail and fly where you can just add a train ticket later for a fixed price or is it more like the train part is coded as a flight where you have to buy the train ticket at the time of ticket purchase?
They are expanding this partnership because of the future of domestic flying restrictions in France.