With its 6.58 million passengers recorded in 2023, Bordeaux-Mérignac is the 8e airport in mainland France, behind Toulouse-Blagnac (7.8) and just ahead of Nantes Atlantique (6.53). Connected by tram, since April 2023, to the city center of Bordeaux, the airport’s three terminals offer direct access to 26 countries and 93 destinations thanks to flights offered by 24 airlines.
If Lyon, Nice and Marseille are on the podium of the most served destinations, we also find Geneva and London outside our borders. The catalog of cities served changes every year. For the 2024 summer season, three destinations were added (Funchal, Verona and Palermo) while four were abandoned: Brussels, Santiago de Compostela, Eindhoven and Luxor-Cairo. For winter 2024-2025, easyJet has announced service to Rabat, Morocco. And, for the summer 2025 season, reservations for which opened on 1is October, the low-cost subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Transavia group has already announced the extension of its new services inaugurated in 2024 (Porto, Seville, Marrakech, Agadir, Istanbul, Marseille and Dakar).
Traffic still below before Covid
“Since Covid, we have been gradually rebuilding traffic, like all European airports,” confides Simon Dreschel, chairman of the board of directors of Bordeaux airport. If passenger traffic increased by 15.4% between 2022 and 2023, the traffic recorded in 2023 is still 14.5% lower than that recorded in 2019. “Year after year, we reconnect with European cities . And we are committed to developing lines that make sense,” explains Simon Dreschel.
Open door to the world, nerve center for air transport in the Greater South-West, Bordeaux-Mérignac airport is also an economic heavyweight. 94 establishments (companies, shops, industries, public organizations, etc. are present on and near the 850 hectares of airport surface area, to ensure the arrival and departure of more than 68,000 flights in 2023 – 51,270 commercial movements and 16,979 non-commercial, according to statistics provided by the Union of French Airports.
8,000 direct jobs, 40,000 indirect
This involves ensuring the arrival and departure of travelers and everything we call the passenger journey within the three terminals: car rental, hotels, reception, shops, catering, cleaning, etc. Inside the planes, catering companies like Elio and New Rest ensure the delivery of meal trays. There are also ancillary services such as track activities. And finally everything relating to aeronautical maintenance. At the center of this hive of professions and activities: the Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport Company, which carries out “management, maintenance and operation missions for the airport domain and infrastructure”.
All activities of the airport platform – administration, support, operation, engineering, risk prevention, security, navigation, freight, logistics, etc. – represents nearly 8,000 jobs, 40,000 if we include those in the aeronautics-space-defense sector, hotels and restaurants, financial services, etc. The regional economic impact of the airport is estimated at 6 billion euros. “We fuel the local economy,” says Simon Dreschel.
250 million investments
The airport is preparing to accelerate its cruising speed and, thus, strengthen its economic weight. In July, its management presented a vast modernization and expansion project. By 2028, a new building of more than 20,000 square meters will be built between halls A and B. It will accommodate a single screening inspection station and will offer a large, more user-friendly waiting area with more businesses downstream of the controls.
Total cost of the project: 130 million euros. 250 million over the next five years, if we include the other modernization projects undertaken: renovation of the Billi terminal and construction of shade structures on the P4 car park in 2024, creation of silo car parks and a “car center” in 2025 , improvement of the arrivals circuit in Hall A in 2026… Enough to improve the reception of 7.7 million passengers, a pre-Covid level of attendance that Bordeaux-Mérignac airport hopes to return to in the medium term.
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