Air Inter

If you are interested in French aviation of the 1970s and 1980s, you cannot get around Air Inter. The domestic airline connected Paris with Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and Corsica on a dense schedule, and on its apron at Orly stood a fleet that existed nowhere else: the Caravelle, the rare Dassault Mercure, plus the A300 and A320 early on. Here you learn how Air Inter came about, what made its fleet so special, how to recognize it in old photos and how it finally merged into Air France.

Air Inter at a glance

Air Inter was the French domestic airline par excellence. It was founded on November 12, 1954, under the name Lignes Aériennes Intérieures. It was backed by public and private transport companies as well as banks; the largest founding shareholders were Air France and the state railway SNCF. Later the private UTA gradually rose to become the largest single shareholder.

For four years Air Inter largely existed only on paper. On March 16, 1958, the first scheduled flight took off between Paris and Strasbourg, but in the same year operations had to be suspended again for financial reasons. Regular flying only began in 1960 – after the state transferred domestic traffic on the French mainland to Air Inter in February 1960.

Its home was Paris Orly from the start. Flights were concentrated in the west terminal, Orly-Ouest, which also housed flight operations and maintenance. Administration later moved from Paris to Paray-Vieille-Poste, right next to the airport. From 1974, a few routes from Paris Charles de Gaulle were added, serving as feeders for the long-haul routes of Air France and UTA.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code IT: appeared before the flight numbers, on tickets and baggage tags.
• ICAO code ITF: used by air traffic control to identify the flights.
• Callsign AIR INTER: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio – simple and unambiguous.

If you go through old schedules, tickets or boarding passes, you can attribute French domestic flights with “IT” before the number to Air Inter up to the mid-1990s. How the two code systems work is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes.

The history in stages

Europe’s largest domestic airline

Air Inter grew rapidly, especially in the 1970s. According to the available statistics, the number of passengers rose from around 4.6 million in 1975 to about 5.7 million in 1980 and kept rising afterward. That made Air Inter the largest domestic airline in Europe, and in at least one year it even carried more passengers than Air France.

The recipe for success was a dense schedule on a few very heavily demanded routes: Paris to Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Mulhouse, plus Ajaccio, Bastia and Calvi on Corsica. The principle is more like a shuttle than a classic hub – the difference is explained in the article on hub-and-spoke and point-to-point.

A forerunner of the low-cost carriers?

Some aviation historians see Air Inter as a trailblazer for later low-cost airlines. Seats were not assigned in advance, meals on board cost extra, and turnaround times were short. For pricing, Air Inter used a color-coded fare calendar in blue, white and red: depending on the day and time, different price levels applied – an early example of yield management. You can read about how the modern business model works under How low-cost carriers work.

The fleet: from the Viscount to the A320

Air Inter was an airline with a distinctly French fleet profile – with the exception of the British Viscount and the Dutch F27, the most important types came from France or from Airbus. The most important types at a glance:

Type	Period at Air Inter	Use	Spotter tip
Douglas DC-3	Late 1950s	First scheduled flights	First flight Paris–Strasbourg 1958
Vickers Viscount	1960s–1970s	First backbone	British turboprop with oval windows
Fokker F27	1960s–1980s	Smaller domestic routes	Air Inter was a major customer of the Series 500
Nord 262	around 1970	Thin routes	Four aircraft leased from Rousseau Aviation
Caravelle III and 12	1960s–1990s	Main routes	Engines at the rear, triangular windows
Dassault Mercure 100	1974–1995	Dense domestic routes	Air Inter was the only operator
Airbus A300B2/B4	from the 1970s	Paris–major cities	Up to 22 aircraft
Airbus A320	from the late 1980s	Standardized fleet	Air Inter was a launch customer
A319, A321, A330-300	1990s	Supplement	Only arrived in the final years of operation

A look at 1980 shows the change: back then the fleet consisted of 48 aircraft – Fokker F27s, Caravelles in two versions, ten Mercures and eight Airbuses. By the end, the fleet comprised around 76 aircraft according to available figures.

Vickers Viscount and Fokker F27

The Vickers Viscount from Britain shaped the first years of scheduled service. It was a modern turboprop with a pressurized cabin and brought Air Inter into the turbine era. Alongside it, Air Inter flew the Fokker F27 Friendship, mainly the stretched Series 500, on smaller routes. The cargo subsidiary Intercargo Services additionally used two Vickers Vanguards – but they were not part of the passenger fleet.

Caravelle: all-weather pioneer

The Sud Aviation Caravelle was Air Inter’s first jet aircraft. The Series III and the stretched Caravelle 12, also called the “Super 12,” were used. With the Caravelle, Air Inter broke new technical ground: the airline is considered a pioneer of automatic landing under Category III, that is, in very low visibility. Especially in the fog of the Paris basin, this was a real advantage. How precision approaches work is explained in the article on the ILS approach.

Dassault Mercure: the one-off

The Dassault Mercure is the type that makes Air Inter unmistakable. Dassault Aviation designed the twin-engine short-haul jet as a competitor to the Boeing 737 but found no buyer besides Air Inter. Air Inter ordered ten on January 30, 1972, and received a state subsidy for it. On June 4, 1974, the Mercure entered scheduled service. Only twelve aircraft were built in total, including two prototypes; Air Inter later took over one of them in addition, after refurbishment.

In an all-economy layout, the Mercure offered up to 162 seats in six-abreast rows. Air Inter flew it with a three-person cockpit crew, although the jet was designed for two pilots. Over its entire career, the small fleet accumulated around 360,000 flight hours. On April 29, 1995, the last two Mercures flew their final scheduled flights.

Airbus A300 and A320

Air Inter was among the early operators of the Airbus A300. On the busiest routes between Paris and Marseille, Nice or Toulouse, the widebody fit the concept perfectly. Besides the A300B2, it also flew the A300B4; at its peak there were 22 aircraft, some of them acquired used up to 1992.

The Airbus A320 became even more important: together with Air France and British Caledonian, Air Inter was a launch customer of the fly-by-wire jet. From 1989 the airline gradually switched to the A320 as its standard type, with around 33 examples in total. In the last years the A319, A321 and A330-300 were added. How to tell the members of the A320 family apart is shown in the article Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart. You can find more about the manufacturer under Airbus.

Competition from rail and new airlines

Ironically, the toughest opponent came from its own circle of shareholders: in 1981, SNCF opened the TGV link between Paris and Lyon and took noticeable numbers of passengers from Air Inter on that route. With every new high-speed section, the train became an alternative on further routes.

From the late 1980s, France gradually opened the domestic market to competition. New providers such as AOM French Airlines, Air Liberté and TAT attacked Air Inter on the lucrative routes from Orly. Added to that were strikes in spring 1995, from which mainly the competition benefited. Air Inter estimated it had lost around 1.3 million passengers in 1995 and responded in June with a discount of 100 francs per ticket. In 1996, the company announced it would close 18 loss-making routes.

One answer to the competition was La Navette: from November 1996, aircraft under the Air Inter Europe brand shuttled between Orly and Toulouse, later also Marseille and Nice – roughly every 30 minutes at peak times, otherwise hourly.

The road to Air France

Air France was a shareholder from the start, but it did not hold control for a long time. That changed in 1990: with the purchase of UTA, Air France also acquired its stake of just under 36 percent in Air Inter and thus controlled over 75 percent of the capital. On January 12, 1990, Air France, UTA and Air Inter were combined in an expanded Air France group.

In the following years, Air Inter moved closer to its parent in look and organization. The aircraft received a livery modeled on Air France with the titles Air Inter Europe. The last flights under the old name Air Inter took place at the end of 1995. On January 1, 1996, the company merged into the new Air France Europe, which continued to appear externally as Air Inter Europe. Against the resistance of the unions, the merger was finally completed: on April 1, 1997, Air Inter disappeared as an independent company and became part of Air France. Today Air France belongs to the Air France-KLM group.

Later, group subsidiaries such as HOP! also took over parts of French domestic and regional traffic – a topic in itself.

How to recognize Air Inter

In old photos from France, Air Inter is easy to identify if you pay attention to type, titles and registration:

After mergers there are often transitional states in which aircraft wear elements of two brands – more on this in the article on hybrid and mixed liveries. How airlines fundamentally change their look is shown in When airlines change their design.

Accidents

Air Inter suffered three fatal accidents in its history. On August 12, 1963, a Viscount crashed in a holding pattern near Tramoyes close to Lyon. On October 27, 1972, another Viscount on approach to Clermont-Ferrand hit a mountain near Noirétable; 60 of the 68 people on board lost their lives.

The most serious accident occurred on January 20, 1992: Flight 148, an A320 with the registration F-GGED, flew into a ridge at Mont Sainte-Odile in the Vosges on approach to Strasbourg. 87 of the 96 occupants died. The investigation found, among other things, that the crew wanted to enter a descent angle but the autopilot was in the vertical speed mode – so the aircraft descended far too steeply. As a result, Airbus changed the display so that the two modes can no longer be confused, and ground proximity warning systems were recommended for the A320. Air Inter retrofitted its fleet with them while the investigation was still under way.

Among the incidents without injuries was an A300B2 that struck a light pole while being pushed back in Montpellier in April 1993 and was subsequently written off.

Air Inter today: traces in museums

You can no longer spot Air Inter live. But several Air Inter aircraft have been preserved – and some of them stand at exciting spotter locations.

At the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace in Le Bourget you see the Mercure F-BTTD and the Caravelle 12 F-GCVL – the matching spot is described on the page Musée de l’Air at Le Bourget Airport. If you are going to the Paris Air Show, you can combine the visit nicely. At Aeroscopia in Toulouse stands the Caravelle 12 F-BTOE, originally delivered to Air Inter; you can find tips for the spot under Aeroscopia in Toulouse-Blagnac and in the spotting guide for Toulouse.

You can also get to a Mercure without a trip to France: the Technik Museum Speyer shows the second prototype, F-BTTB, which later flew scheduled service for Air Inter. Before every visit, check the current opening hours and the exhibit layout, because exhibits are occasionally moved, restored or not accessible. Before you pull out your camera at French airports, also read the article on photographing at French airports.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Air Inter with Air France – until 1997 they were two separate companies; Air Inter flew almost exclusively domestic routes.
• Taking Air Inter Europe for a new company – it was the same airline under a new name and group structure.
• Assigning the IATA code IT to a current airline – in historic records up to the mid-1990s, IT stands for Air Inter.
• Mixing up Air Inter with Air Littoral or Brit Air – Air Littoral and Brit Air also flew French domestic routes but were independent regional airlines.
• Taking the Mercure for a Boeing 737 – the Mercure is bigger, has a longer fuselage and only flew in France.

Conclusion

For decades, Air Inter was the backbone of French domestic traffic and at times the largest domestic airline in Europe. It flew types that were rare or not seen at all elsewhere, above all the Dassault Mercure, and was technically at the forefront with the Caravelle, A300 and A320. In the end, it could not survive as its own brand against the TGV, new competitors and Air France’s group plans. For spotters, it remains a piece of French aviation history that you can visit today in Le Bourget, Toulouse and Speyer.