Personnel touch to provide Paris-Beauvais progress

Bernie Baldwin

It’s all change at Paris-Beauvais Airport, but this time in its personnel.

As Edo Friart, the airport’s chief commercial officer reports, a new chairman and CEO have been appointed.

Change is nothing new to Friart, who is coming up to his first anniversary with the airport. He joined after more than eight and a half years on the other side of the ‘fence’ – with Spanish low-cost carrier Volotea, where his final role was as international development director.

The airport CCO role presents different challenges compared with Friart’s previous work. “Experience gained at Volotea is key in all my talks with colleagues, partners or new contacts,” he continues. “Having said that, I sometimes  still have airline habits about which my colleagues make fun. The angles [in the discussion] are not the same for an airline and an airport. The challenge is different as the airport activity (as it evolves with non-aero revenues) brings many varied elements such as retail, car parks and – specifically for Paris-Beauvais – the essential link by bus between Paris downtown and the airport. But I am glad I have those two experiences.”

Friart reports that in terms of facilities, Paris-Beauvais has worked over the last few months on retail elements with partners “to adapt the offer with some new shops and refresh some others with new concepts”.

He continues: “With all the changes concerning Paris-Beauvais, and also in terms of challenges and strategy of developing our traffic and finding new partners, we aim to improve infrastructure and welcome more passengers. We  have a few projects that need to be validated, depending on the success or not of increasing the traffic.”

New routes and frequencies are required for some of the infrastructure projects to go through, but Friart is confident on that subject. “Thanks to Ryanair and Laudamotion recently, we opened Vienna and Prague, two beautiful destinations we were missing. Also Varna with Wizz Air is a new scheduled destination. 2020 looks promising, but it is a bit early to talk about. If things continue as expected, I’m sure we will have some new routes and new  airlines.”

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