Royal Air Maroc wins 6 new weekly flights from Orly
Royal Air Maroc has secured 6 new weekly flights from Orly to Tétouan, Laâyoune and Zagora after Ryanair's withdrawal, but was denied more flights to Casablanca and Marrakech.
Royal Air Maroc has secured 6 additional weekly flights from Paris-Orly airport, as part of a slot redistribution carried out by Cohor, the committee in charge of managing the airport's landing and take-off slots, following the withdrawal of Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair from a project it had planned to launch there, according to Bladi.net.
Cohor published, on 5 November, the official document detailing the allocation of 4,368 annual slots among the candidate airlines, after they jointly requested more than 21,000 slots, or roughly five requests for every available slot.
Why only 6 flights out of the 28 requested?
Royal Air Maroc had requested 21 additional weekly flights between Orly, Casablanca and Marrakech for summer 2027, split between 14 flights to Casablanca and 7 to Marrakech, but none of these frequencies were granted. Instead, the committee awarded it two weekly round trips for each of Tétouan, Laâyoune and Zagora, for 6 flights in total out of the 28 it had requested for five Moroccan destinations.
Tétouan itself had requested 3 weekly round trips and received only two, while Laâyoune and Zagora obtained the full number they had asked for. These slots come with route restrictions: they must be used exclusively for the three designated destinations.
| Destination | Weekly flights requested | Weekly flights granted |
|---|---|---|
| Casablanca | 14 | 0 |
| Marrakech | 7 | 0 |
| Tétouan | 3 | 2 |
| Laâyoune | 2 | 2 |
| Zagora | 2 | 2 |
A second Moroccan airline enters Orly
Royal Air Maroc was not the only Moroccan carrier to benefit from the redistribution: Air Arabia Maroc obtained 4 additional weekly flights to Fès, its full request for that destination, while its requests for 7 flights to Rabat and 5 to Tangier were not granted. In total, the two Moroccan carriers had requested 44 additional weekly rotations across eight routes and received only 10, spread across four destinations, according to Air Journal.
According to the same outlet, which quotes Cohor director Antoine Lapert speaking to La Tribune, these available slots are explained by the fact that some airlines gave up their slots or lost their historic rights, Ryanair among them, whose slots reserved for 2025 for routes to Bratislava and Bergamo, before it abandoned the project entirely, account for only about a third of the total volume redistributed.
When will these new flights start?
These slots are allocated annually starting from the summer 2027 season, and airlines may be authorized to begin operating as early as winter 2026-2027. To keep these slots for winter 2027-2028, Royal Air Maroc will need to have actually launched the new routes during summer 2027 and confirmed its request within the regulatory deadlines, since Cohor can reallocate the slots of any airline that withdraws before 31 January 2027. The airline has not yet announced flight dates or ticket prices.
Royal Air Maroc had already announced, in January 2026, direct flights between Paris and Tétouan, as part of developing its new air base in northern Morocco.
This redistribution comes amid fierce competition for slots at Orly airport, which also benefited other foreign carriers, such as Germany's Eurowings, which obtained 6 weekly flights to Düsseldorf, Lebanon's Middle East Airlines with 4 flights to Beirut, and Moldova's SkyUp with two flights to Chisinau.