Second airports are often badly connected with the cities they serve. Rome Ciampino is much more difficult to reach by public transport than Fiumicino airport, which has an express rail link to the centre of the Italian capital as well as local train services. Istanbul’s shiny new airport has a rapid Metro connection into Turkey’s largest city – unlike tough-to-reach Sabiha Gokcen airport on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. One rare exception: Gatwick, which was deliberately built beside the main London-Brighton railway line and offers far better links than Heathrow.
For half a century, Paris has had a strict pecking order of airport connections. At the top, Charles de Gaulle, with its direct RER suburban rail link into Paris and out the other side. In addition, CDG has a high-speed rail station with direct TGV links to the north, east and south of France.
At the bottom, Beauvais: a pretty town in northern France, whose airport was built by occupying forces from Nazi Germany. Buses run from here to a car park in the western suburbs of Paris, with onward journeys into the centre from a hard-to-find Métro station.
And in between, Orly – the leading airport in France until 1974, when Charles de Gaulle opened and forced it into a distant second place.
In those days a smart Air France coach ran from Orly to an air terminal close to the Eiffel Tower. With relatively few passengers, that link sufficed. As aviation expanded, so did Orly. In 1991 a driverless shuttle known as Orlyval opened, connecting Orly with a station on the RER network called Antony. While it was a bit sci-fi – autonomous trains were still novel in the 20th century – any city-to-airport link that requires a connection is sub-optimal.
Finally, on 24 June 2024 – just weeks before the Paris Olympics – President Macron inaugurated the extension of Métro line 14 to Orly airport. And having tried the underground link on the first weekend of competition, I can testify it is a game-changer for the Games.
Many of Paris’s Métro stations are now a maximum of one change from Orly airport: there are intersections with 10 other lines. The extension provides a direct connection between Orly and two key main-line stations, St-Lazare (for Normandy) and Gare de Lyon for all points south to the Mediterranean.
Line 14 also serves Chatelet, the massive intersection at the…
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