Air France remains the only airline in the world flying the Airbus A318 on scheduled passenger services, and this will only last for a few more months. The French carrier has scheduled the final flight and retirement of the A318 for early November, after which the smallest member of the Airbus A320 family will disappear from scheduled passenger flying altogether.

According to schedule data from aviation analytics company Cirium, Air France will operate 37 A318 routes from Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport (CDG) between September and November 2026. The final scheduled departure will be a 9:15 PM service to Toulouse-Blagnac Airport (TLS) on November 8, ending 23 years of A318 operations at the carrier.

Air France’s Remaining A318 Routes

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The French airline has scheduled its A318 fleet to serve a total of 37 routes over its last weeks in service, with a total of 621 one-way flights between September and November. Domestic pairings make up the bulk of the schedule, with nine French routes allocated 329 flights, or around 53% of the total.

Marseille Provence Airport (MRS) is the most-served destination by a considerable distance, with 121 one-way A318 departures during this period. Toulouse is in second with 65 departures, followed by Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport (BOD) and Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport (LYS) at 40 flights each, while Nice Côte d’Azur Airport (NCE) and Warsaw Chopin Airport (WAW) round out the top six with 33 departures each. These six busiest routes alone account for more than half of all remaining A318 flights.

Besides France, a total of 13 countries will see A318 service from Air France: in order of flights, these are Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Croatia, Ireland, Hungary, Switzerland, and Morocco​​​​. Italy is the busiest with ten destinations and 92 flights, ahead of Spain on four routes and Germany on three.

November 8: The Final Day Will See 12 Departures

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Air France’s schedule for November 8 will see 12 A318 departures from Paris CDG, serving ten destinations across five countries. The first flight will be a 7:10 AM service to Milan Linate, while the final flight will be a 9:15 PM departure to Toulouse, which is due to arrive at 10:35 PM. This will be a somewhat symbolic flight as Toulouse is Airbus’s headquarters and home base, although the A318 was assembled at the manufacturer’s Hamburg-Finkenwerder facility rather than in southern France.

Toulouse and Lyon will both handle two A318 flights, while Milan is also served at both of its airports. The longest flight of the day is the 3:45 PM departure to Warsaw, blocked at two hours and 15 minutes, while the two Lyon flights are the shortest at one hour and ten minutes each.

The carrier had originally planned to cease all A318 operations at the end of the summer season on October 24, but would extend the type’s schedule by a further two weeks. The airline has just four A318s left in the fleet (F-GUGM, F-GUGN, F-GUGO, and F-GUGP), all of which were delivered in 2006 and will be 20 years old by the time they retire.

The A318 Will Be The First Airbus Model To Cease Passenger Flights

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Despite entering service in 2003, the A318 is set to become the planemaker’s first model to exit scheduled passenger service entirely. Although Airbus has several older aircraft types in its portfolio, such as the A300 and A310, these two jets still see regular passenger flights with Iranian carriers, while the larger A340 remains in service with Lufthansa, among other airlines.

Air France was the largest customer of the A318, flying a total of 18 of the 80 airframes built by Airbus. A handful of other notable airlines flew the jet, including Avianca, British Airways and Frontier Airlines. Air France became the last remaining passenger A318 operator in 2024 when Romania’s TAROM retired its fleet.

The A318 will not disappear from the skies altogether, as nearly 20 examples continue to fly as corporate and government jets, representing almost a quarter of the A318’s production total. However, the ‘Baby Bus’ will be bowing out of scheduled passenger service for good this November.