The Tunisia Guide

Tunisair Adds 787-9 Wide-Body Capacity on Paris Orly Route

· 2 min read · News
Tunis medina with the Zitouna Mosque visible above the rooftops

Contents

  1. 1.What this means for summer passengers
  2. 2.Connections to coastal destinations

Tunisair has wet-leased a Boeing 787-9 wide-body aircraft to operate on its Tunis–Paris Orly route as the airline prepares for sustained summer 2026 demand. The move adds significantly more seats per rotation compared with the narrowbody Airbus aircraft typically deployed on this connection.

The wet lease arrangement brings an aircraft and crew from an external provider, allowing Tunisair to scale capacity without a new aircraft purchase. It follows a separate agreement announced earlier in May in which Plus Ultra was contracted to sustain Tunisair’s Paris CDG and Montréal services. This latest 787-9 deployment is targeted specifically at the Orly corridor — a key route for Tunisians travelling between France and Tunisia, and for European tourists flying into Tunis.

What this means for summer passengers

The 787-9 is a wide-body aircraft with a standard configuration of around 280–300 seats depending on the operating airline’s layout. For passengers, the practical effect is a higher seat count per flight, which should ease the capacity constraints that have affected Tunisair’s summer bookings in recent seasons.

Demand on the Tunis–Paris Orly axis remains consistently high through June, July and August. Travellers flying into Tunis from Paris Orly should find more availability than in prior years, though ticket prices on this route have been under upward pressure in 2026 as fuel costs have risen.

Connections to coastal destinations

Paris Orly handles the primary flow of French and European travellers into Tunisia. From Tunis-Carthage Airport, domestic Tunisair Express flights connect to Djerba, Monastir, and Tabarka. Djerba draws a significant share of Europe’s summer Tunisia tourism and is this season served by more than 5,600 scheduled international flights from carriers across 16 countries.

For details on how to arrive and which airports serve different regions of the country, our flights to Tunisia guide covers international gateways and domestic connections. For seasonal planning, the best time to visit Tunisia page outlines climate and crowd conditions month by month.