Brit Air

If you looked at the apron in Lyon, Paris Orly or Brest in the 2000s, you almost certainly saw a Brit Air regional jet – you just often didn’t notice. The airline from Morlaix in northern Brittany flew most of the time under Air France flight numbers and in Air France colors. Even so, it wrote a piece of aircraft-type history: two versions of the CRJ family entered scheduled service with Brit Air first. Here you will learn how a Breton air taxi became one of France’s major regional airlines, how you recognize Brit Air in old photos and how it merged into HOP!.

Brit Air at a glance

Brit Air was a French regional airline headquartered in Morlaix in Brittany. The full company name was Brittany Air International. The company was founded in 1973, originally as an air taxi and business travel service for western Brittany – a region that was poorly connected to Paris and abroad at the time.

From this small beginning came a large regional airline: according to French-language Wikipedia, Brit Air had around 1,300 employees in 2008, flew about 300 flights a day and carried around four million passengers. Important bases were Lyon-Saint-Exupéry, Paris Orly and Paris Charles de Gaulle, plus Brest, Nantes and Strasbourg.

The history of Brit Air is closely tied to Air France. First the airline flew on behalf of the state-owned company, then as a franchise partner, finally as a subsidiary. For spotters, that is exactly what makes assigning it difficult – and exciting.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code DB: Brit Air’s identifier in timetables. In practice it appeared less often, because most flights ran under Air France numbers.
• ICAO code BZH: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan. BZH is the common abbreviation for “Breizh,” the Breton name of Brittany.
• Callsign BRITAIR: this is how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

A typical example is the accident flight of 2003: it is known as Air France 5672, but it was flown by a Brit Air crew with a Brit Air aircraft. If you go through old timetables, boarding passes or radio recordings, always pay attention to who actually operated the flight. How IATA and ICAO codes relate is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes.

The history: from air taxi to CRJ operator

Founding in Morlaix

Brit Air was created in 1973 on the initiative of Xavier Leclercq, who was active in the Morlaix chamber of commerce. According to French-language Wikipedia, the first shareholders included farms from the region around Saint-Pol-de-Léon – the vegetable-growing area in northern Finistère needed fast connections. The name is no coincidence reminiscent of Brittany Ferries, which had been founded a year earlier from the same circle.

The first aircraft were two Piper Aztecs, small twin-engine piston aircraft. At the end of the 1970s came Piper Cheyennes and Navajos as well as the first Embraer Bandeirantes.

Scheduled service to London

In 1979, Brit Air started regular scheduled service: five routes connected Rennes, Morlaix, Quimper, Le Havre and Caen with London. That gave Brittany and Normandy direct connections across the English Channel – fitting for the ferries that brought many British vacationers to the region.

In 1983 came the cooperation with Air Inter: Brit Air flew on behalf of the domestic carrier from Rennes and Quimper to Paris. For this, two Fokker F27s joined the fleet. In 1986, Brit Air concluded a similar agreement with Air France and took over the first two ATR 42s.

Growth with ATR and Saab

At the end of the 1980s, Brit Air switched to modern turboprops. In 1989, ATR 42s replaced the F27s, along with six Saab 340s and an order for the larger ATR 72. In 1991, the airline founded the ICARE training center in Morlaix, where pilots were initially trained on a simulator for the ATR 42 and 72.

In 1995, the jet era began with four Canadair Regional Jets. In the same year, the trade magazine Air Transport World named Brit Air regional airline of the year.

Franchise and Air France majority

In 1997, Brit Air signed a franchise agreement with Air France that covered all routes. The network then grew from 22 to 33 routes, according to French sources. In 1998 the airline went public on the Paris stock exchange and temporarily took a stake in the regional airline Chalair. In 2000, Air France took the majority – which made Brit Air part of the Air France group and indirectly of the SkyTeam world, and passengers earned miles with Flying Blue.

The fleet: from turboprop to all-CRJ operator

Brit Air’s fleet changed completely over four decades. The following overview is based on the fleet data from French- and English-language Wikipedia; individual years and numbers differ slightly depending on the source.

Type	Number (approx.)	Era	Use and note
Piper Aztec, Cheyenne, Navajo	a few	1970s and 1980s	Air taxi and business flights
Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante	up to 4	from 1978	First scheduled flights to London from 1979
Beechcraft King Air 200	2	around 1989–1991	Light aircraft alongside the turboprops
Fokker F27 Friendship	2	from 1983	Flights for Air Inter to Paris
ATR 42	up to 14	1986–2005	Most important turboprop
ATR 72	2	1991–2003	Stretched ATR version
Saab 340	6	1987–1998	Swedish regional turboprop
Bombardier CRJ100	around 20	from 1995	The airline’s first regional jet
Fokker 100	up to 7	from the late 1990s until 2011	Larger jet for busier routes
Bombardier CRJ700	13 at the end	from 2001	Brit Air was launch customer
Bombardier CRJ900	2	2010–2011	Short-term replacement for the Fokker 100
Bombardier CRJ1000	14 at the end	from December 2010	Launch customer together with Air Nostrum

ATR and Saab: the turboprop years

With the ATR 42 – at first in the ATR 42-300 version – Brit Air got the turboprop in 1986 that shaped the fleet into the 2000s. From 1991, two ATR 72-200s also flew. The manufacturer is ATR from Toulouse. In parallel, Brit Air relied on the Saab 340 from Saab. You can tell the two types apart well by the tail: the ATR has a T-tail with the horizontal stabilizer on top, the Saab 340 a low-set horizontal stabilizer and a shorter, rounder silhouette. More in the article Telling turboprops apart.

Before that, the EMB 110 Bandeirante, Fokker F27 Friendship and King Air 200 flew for the airline – types you rarely see in scheduled service today.

CRJ100: entry into the jet era

In 1995, Brit Air took over its first four Canadair Regional Jets. The CRJ100/CRJ200 quickly became the backbone of the fleet; around 2001, about twenty examples were flying. The jet was faster than the turboprops and suited the longer routes in the Air France network, for example from Lyon to European destinations. The manufacturer is Bombardier from Canada.

In addition, Brit Air flew the Fokker 100 from Fokker. According to French-language Wikipedia, the airline’s last commercial Fokker 100 flight went from Clermont-Ferrand to Paris Orly on October 20, 2011. As a stopgap, two CRJ900s joined the fleet in 2010.

CRJ700 and CRJ1000: launch customer twice

The best-known chapter of the fleet history: in 2001, Brit Air brought the CRJ700 into scheduled service as the first airline, the stretched version with around 70 seats. Nine years later, Brit Air was launch customer, together with Air Nostrum, of the CRJ1000 with around 100 seats – the first aircraft arrived in mid-December 2010. According to French-language Wikipedia, Brit Air’s very first CRJ1000 was the only one to carry a special Breton livery, and the following ones came in Air France colors.

How to tell the CRJ100, CRJ700 and CRJ1000 apart is shown in the article Recognizing regional jets. One tip in advance: count the windows behind the wings and pay attention to the length of the fuselage ahead of the engines – the CRJ1000 looks almost tube-like in length.

The route network

Brit Air flew mainly cross-country connections within France and feeder flights to the Air France hubs. According to French-language Wikipedia, the network comprised around 36 destinations in 2008.

Region	Destinations (selection)	Note
Brittany and the west	Brest, Quimper, Lorient, Rennes, Nantes, Caen	The airline’s home region
Rest of France	Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nice, Pau, Rodez, Basel-Mulhouse	Many cross-country connections without a detour via Paris
Paris	Orly and Charles de Gaulle	Feeder into the Air France network
Europe	Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bilbao, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Prague, Rome, Zagreb	Often from Lyon or Paris

Interesting for German spotters: with Düsseldorf and Hamburg, German destinations were also in the network. Brit Air CRJs in Air France colors were occasionally seen there – mostly without a spotter immediately thinking of a Breton airline. The article Regional airlines in Europe gives an overview of similar companies.

From Brit Air to HOP!

In the early 2010s, Air France had three regional subsidiaries: Brit Air, Régional and Airlinair. The group decided to bundle the three airlines under one roof. On March 31, 2013, they flew together for the first time under the new brand HOP!.

After that, the three companies were also legally merged under the name HOP!. In July 2015, Air France-KLM announced it would finally merge the old brands for 2017. In 2016, according to French-language Wikipedia, the triskelion and ermine – the Breton symbols – disappeared from the tails. That meant nothing of Brit Air was left visually either.

The further development of HOP! went one step further: in 2019, Air France renamed the subsidiary Air France Hop and switched all flights to Air France flight numbers. The CRJ fleet that Brit Air had once built up was retired in the following years. Today Air France Hop flies with Embraer jets such as the E190 from Embraer.

How to recognize Brit Air

You no longer encounter Brit Air live. On photos from France between the 1980s and 2013, though, all the more often. These features help with assigning:

The most reliable feature is the registration. Brit Air aircraft were registered in France and carry an F- before the letter sequence, for example F-GRJS on the CRJ100 of the 2003 accident or F-HMLA on the first CRJ1000. In individual cases, check the assignment in a database. How to follow an aircraft’s history is explained in Researching an aircraft’s history.

Accidents and incidents

The best-known accident in Brit Air’s history occurred on June 22, 2003. A CRJ100 with the registration F-GRJS was en route from Nantes to Brest as Air France Flight 5672. On approach to Brest-Guipavas, the aircraft touched down several kilometers short of the runway. There were 24 people on board. The captain died, and all the others were able to leave the aircraft before it burned out.

The French investigation authority BEA saw the cause mainly in the crew not activating the autopilot’s approach mode, not noticing deviations and continuing an unstabilized approach.

Brit Air today: traces for spotters

The airline has disappeared, and its aircraft have moved on or been scrapped. Through the registration you can follow where individual aircraft went after their time at Brit Air and HOP!. For spotters, Brit Air remains mainly a topic for the archive and collection: old photos, timetables, boarding passes and models.

If you want to see regional traffic in France today, you will find it at Air France Hop, Chalair or Air Corsica. Before you photograph at a French airport, read the article on photographing at French airports. For classifying older types, Spotting vintage aircraft helps.

Common mix-ups

• Taking Brit Air for a British airline – the name alludes to Brittany, not to Great Britain.
• Confusing Brit Air with Air Littoral – both flew CRJs and ATRs, but Air Littoral came from Montpellier and never belonged to Air France.
• Assigning every CRJ in Air France colors to Brit Air – other partners also flew in the Air France design, the registration decides.
• Treating an AF flight number as an Air France operation – many AF flights were operated by Brit Air.
• Taking HOP! for a pure new foundation – HOP! emerged from Brit Air, Régional and Airlinair.

Conclusion

Brit Air was the airline of Brittany – and one of France’s most important regional companies. An air taxi with two Pipers became, over four decades, a pure jet operator that flew for Air France between Brest, Lyon, Paris and half of Europe. As launch customer of the CRJ700 and CRJ1000, Brit Air wrote aircraft-type history, and with the merger into HOP! its own brand ended. For spotters it remains a rewarding chapter that you can follow well through F- registrations and old photos.