Amid the 2024 Summer Olympics, it’s been a busy season for airlines flying to and from Paris along with Tahiti. Among them, French bee has been making their place in sky with service not only to the City of Lights but also the French Polynesian capital of Papeete.
Also with this low-cost carrier, August marks the one-year anniversary of the appointment of current CEO and President Christine Ourmières-Widener.
Ourmières-Widener is French bee’s first female CEO, guiding this eight-year-old nonstop carrier from certain U.S. routes to Paris Orly, its home airport.
With an engineering degree from Isae-ENSMA and master's degree in marketing from ESSEC Business School, the Avignon native has established a designated route for herself within the aviation industry.
Soaring In Her Career
Upon graduating from school, Ourmières-Widener was recruited by Air France and started out by fixing aircraft such as airbuses and the famous Concorde in a maintenance hangar. “I was the only woman surrounded by very experienced technicians,” she remembered.
MORE FOR YOU
Overtime, Ourmières-Widener would advance within Air France through various positions from the late 1990s through 2010 and onward. For one year, she was the first woman to lead Air France-KLM in the United States (2009-2010). In her final role with France’s flag carrier, she oversaw 14 airports with a turnover of $1.6 billion.
Ourmières-Widener’s resume also lists years at Amadeus, a French travel technology company, and as global sales director at American Express Global Business Travel.
Her past leadership roles range from CEO and COO of CityJet, an Irish regional airline, to CEO of Flybe, a British low-cost carrier, until July 2019. Also that year, she sold the latter airline to an investment consortium.
Right before French bee, Ourmières-Widener led TAP Air Portugal, where her two-year tenure resulted in turning around the low-cost Portuguese airline by achieving record profitability in 2022 amid spearheading a complex restructuring plan.
Regardless of her role, Ourmières-Widener always recognizes behind the magic behind a plane takeoff or landing, in how an extensive network of aviation workers make it all possible.
“There was something special about it,” explained Ourmières-Widener. “And when I started my career, it was a confirmation; that was definitely a passion.”
The Buzz Behind French bee
French bee was launched in 2016, jointly by its first CEO and airline executive Marc Rochet, and Jean-Paul Dubreuil, chairman of its parent owner, Groupe Dubreuil.
Initially known as “French Blue,” the airline’s name was rebranded to French bee to avoid a potential lawsuit with JetBlue. In the summer of 2017, the company added Réunion Island, then San Francisco and Tahiti in 2018 to its flight schedule, and then to New York via Newark in 2021. Their U.S. flight nonstop routes to Orly also include Miami and Los Angeles, along with a San Francisco flight to Papeete.
As French bee’s CEO, Ourmières-Widener joins a group of other female aviation CEOs such as Aer Lingus’ Lynne Embleton, Japan Airlines’ Tottori Mitsuko and JetBlue’s Joanna Geraghty.
It’s a good sign following a 2021 survey by the International Air Transport Association on how women are still under-represented in leadership roles with airlines. In response to a pilot shortage, there’s now a push to fill this employment gap by giving more opportunities to women.
“I think it's wonderful to see that how has it been for females working in the aviation industry,” said Ourmières-Widener.
In Flight Service
With bookings, French bee offers three fare categories — Basic, Smart and Premium. Across them, passengers can include add-ons like amenity kits and various seating assignments.
A unique French bee booking option is the Train + Air service, a package combining these two travel methods. Done in partnership with SNCF (French Railways), the package services 15 train stations, including Aix-en-Provence TGV, Avignon TGV, Lyon Part-Dieu and Marseille St-Charles.
Citing the push in France to switch from the use of domestic flights to more in-country rail travel, Ourmières-Widener thinks that promoting the connection from Orly shows how beneficial this method of travel is.
“We also do a lot online because our customers want to do everything online,” she said. “We have a helpdesk that is also based within the U.S. for U.S. customers.”
Getting Ready for Gold
In preparing for the 2024 Olympics, Ourmières-Widener noted that French bee held coordination planning meetings on logistics for Paris and France's overseas collectivities. “And that's also the beauty of this event; people will discover the dimension of France on a broader basis.”
In recent years, the airline has been seeing a shift in the audiences that it attracts since its inception, with a rise in more business travelers and groups as passengers. It’s also finding an increase and overall move to bookings in September and October, typically a slower season for travel to Paris.
“We have to motivate our customers to keep on traveling to this wonderful country,” said Ourmières-Widener. “There is no bad season in France.”
