The last French Boeing 747

In 2010, it then returned to Corsair International once and for all, deployed mainly for long-haul holiday flights, including to the Caribbean and Mauritius. In 2017, its seating was reconfigured to 30 business class and 491 economy class seats.

In 2020, the F-GTUI was retired, finding its final resting place in Great Britain. This is where we came across the Boeing 747, allowing us to proudly present this fantastic plane to you as the latest Aviationtag Edition. F-GTUI was actually the aircraft that operated Corsair's last flight with a Boeing 747 from Paris Orly to Kemble. Given the fact that Air France had already retired their Boeing 747 earlier, this was actually the last flight of French Boeing 747.

Corsair itself had just as turbulent a past as the F-GTUI. Corsair is a French charter airline headquartered in Rungis and based at Paris-Orly Airport. It is currently owned by a consortium of investors. Corsair International was founded by a Corsican family in 1981 as Corse Air International and started its flight operations on 17 May 1981. In 1990, the French tour operator Nouvelles Frontières took over the airline, renaming it Corsair. In 2000, TUI took ownership of the company. When TUI introduced a company-wide uniform colour scheme, Corsair’s planes were also changed to comply with it, as was its name in 2005 when it became Corsairfly.

In March 2012, the reverse happened and it was announced that Corsairfly would change its name to Corsair International later that year. 2013 marked the beginning of the modernisation of the fleet’s cabins, with the number of seats being slightly reduced. Prior to this, some of the Corsair Boeing 747-400s had the highest seating capacity of all passenger planes deployed up to that time, with 582 (in 2006 even 587!) seats. Our F-GTUI, by contrast, had “just” 533 seats. As the corona pandemic unfolded, Corsair already decided to part with its three jumbo jets, including the F-GTUI, in 2019. On 26 November 2020, a bailout plan was announced for the company with a consortium of foreign investors taking it over. This plan, which includes a new focus on serving the overseas departments, also included TUI’s and Intro Aviation’s shares being sold to the new consortium.