Air France Upgrading St. Maarten Route To A350s From February 2027

Out with the old, in with the new. Just like KLM, Air France is also phasing out its Airbus A330s, with just 6 more A330-200s set for retirement.

Over the past few years, St. Maarten’s heavy traffic mostly consisted of Airbus A330s, from both KLM and Air France. KLM was the first to switch some of its services over to Boeing 787 Dreamliners. The Amsterdam (AMS) – St. Maarten (SXM) – Georgetown, Guyana (GEO) route is currently operated by a Boeing 787-9, while the flight that routes to Trinidad (POS), is still an A330-200.

This is expected to change at the end of November 2026, as KLM will swap the AMS-SXM-POS segment to a Boeing 787-10. Air France is making a similar move, phasing out its remaining Airbus A330s, but will instead replace them with Airbus A350-900s. From February 1, 2027, both daily flights will be A350-operated.

Currently, Air France deploys their A330s on a very limited number of routes including St. Maarten, various cities across the African continent, Lebanon, and Bengaluru, India.

St. Maarten’s route is interesting as it is highly seasonal, and the A330-200s were a good fit at the time. Depending on demand, they would either operate one or two daily flights depending on the loads. This also allowed Air France to deploy their A350s elsewhere on higher demand segments. Now that they are taking delivery of more A350s, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the change is finally being made.

Air France’s A330-200s are also up there in age, ranging being 21-24 years old, so it’s no surprise they are being phased out of the fleet. According to their filed schedules, the remaining A330s will stay in the fleet for the winter 2026/27 season, with the last flight scheduled for March 28, 2027. All routes after that will either be swapped to an Airbus A350-900 or Boeing 787-9.

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