Air France is quietly reshaping its US network. The French carrier has confirmed two new nonstop routes from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Nashville and San Diego, both launching in May 2027 with three weekly Airbus A350-900 departures. The news lands shortly after the airline confirmed its Denver route will end this month and won't return, so this is less a pure expansion than a recalibration — but it still brings Air France to 20 US routes from CDG next summer, one more than Lufthansa flies from Germany (26 if you count the Lufthansa Group's leisure arm Discover Airlines).

Nashville gets its first Air France service — and a first for the whole SkyTeam family — starting May 14, 2027, flying Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It'll be the fourth European carrier at Nashville International, joining British Airways (Heathrow since 2018), Icelandair (Reykjavík) and Aer Lingus (Dublin since 2025). Demand is clearly there: Paris was Nashville's biggest unserved European market, with about 31,000 local round-trip passengers in the year to July 2026, ahead of Rome, Amsterdam, Athens and Frankfurt. And past route launches suggest the new flights will move that number sharply — Aer Lingus more than doubled local Dublin traffic in its first year, while Icelandair grew Reykjavík point-to-point passengers by over 240%.

San Diego's story is slightly different. Air France has touched down there before, but only sporadically for big conferences like the American Society of Hematology — never as a scheduled service. That changes on May 17, 2027, also three times a week on the A350-900, using the flight numbers previously assigned to Denver. At 4,729 nautical miles each way, it becomes Air France's longest US route, edging out Los Angeles. San Diego will also host a record four European airlines at once: British Airways twice daily from Heathrow, KLM three weekly from Amsterdam, and Lufthansa daily from Munich.

There's a smaller subplot worth noting for mid-America travellers: Icelandair announced a Reykjavík–St. Louis route the same day, starting May 14, 2027 with three weekly 737 MAX 8 flights. It's the first St. Louis–Europe service since WOW Air folded in 2019, and with British Airways and Lufthansa also now at STL, that's another record three-carrier European line-up. Icelandair's partnership with Southwest — which funnels over 2,500 connecting passengers through STL daily — is a big part of the maths.

Why does this matter if you're planning a trip? Nonstop Paris links make France, and the wider European connection network, far more accessible from the US South and West — no East Coast transfer required. Nashville travellers get a genuine new gateway, and San Diego finally gets a reliable year-round European flag-carrier link rather than charter-style one-offs. Expect the 2027 summer schedules to load into booking systems soon; if history repeats, early fares on brand-new routes like these can be competitive in the first months.

First reported by Simple Flying.