AOM French Airlines

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AOM French Airlines

IATA IW	ICAO AOM	Callsign French Lines
Founded		1988
Hubs		Orly Airport
Frequent flyer program		Qualiflyer
Fleet size		34
Destinations		24
Headquarters		Orly Airport
Key people		Marc Rochet
Website:

AOM French Airlines (previously Air Outre-Mer) was the second largest airline in France from 1990 to 2003.

1 History
2 Destinations
3 Fleet
4 See Also
5 External Links

[edit] History

Air Outre Mer (AOM) was founded in 1988 on the island of Réunion, and commenced scheduled passenger service in 1990 with a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 and a Dornier Do 228. In October 1991 Air Outre Mer merged with Minerve, a french airline which was based at Orly and had operated since 1975. The two companies began operating under the name AOM French Airlines, although the administrative name was "AOM-Minerve S.A.". Minerve was the first airline to compete directly with Air Inter on the french domestic airline market by opening a Paris (Orly) - Nice route in may of 1990. During the 1990s Swissair acquired a stake in the airline as a part of its "hunter strategy". For most of the decade, the airline fiercely competed with Air France on both the French domestic market and on the air routes to the French overseas territories. Due to innapropriate fleet management and overcapacity, the airline quickly accumulated huge debts and consequently ceased operating in 2001 (possibly as a result of the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the early 2000s recession which followed). The airline's final bankruptcy was approved after several months of strikes and AOM's disappearance was followed by several other French airlines such as Aeris, Air Littoral and Euralair in the next several years, leaving Air France and Corsairfly as the only two remaining major airlines in France as of today.