Olympic Games 2024: why Roissy and Orly airports will be closed during the opening ceremony

The Paris Olympic Games next summer will splash the daily lives of the French. New illustration: all airports around the capital will be closed on the evening of the opening ceremony, scheduled for July 26, 2024, indicate our colleagues from Le Parisien, information confirmed to Le Figaro by the Ministry of Transport. More precisely, a strict temporary prohibition zone, with a diameter of 150 km and without altitude limit, will be set up around Paris on July 26, between 7 p.m. and midnight.

“No flights (neither takeoff, nor landing, nor overflight) will be permitted in this airspace during the mentioned time slot,” specifies the Ministry of Transport, except for emergency services flights and flights which could benefit from a exceptional exemption. Thus, “usual users, airlines, professionals and individuals, will be invited to postpone their activity or to bypass this zone during the period in question”, we add from the ministry. And this ban from 7 p.m. to midnight could have a wider impact on traffic, because “traffic regulations will be implemented from 5 p.m. on Friday July 26”.

For passengers who have already purchased tickets on impacted flights, they will be “warned by the airlines and compensated”, the government is assured, which affirms that “the State services are working jointly with the airlines and airport players to limit as much as possible the impact of this restriction on air traffic. In a recent letter addressed to Ile-de-France aviation operators, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) does not rule out the establishment of restricted and no-fly zones during other periods of the Olympic Games, “ to protect certain Olympic sites. Restrictions that the executive justifies by “the search for the best balance between maintaining aviation activity and guaranteeing the safety of users and people”. The measures and procedures put in place will be clarified in spring 2024.

Air traffic will not be the only one to have to adapt to the Olympic Games. River traffic too. The Seine will in fact be closed to river traffic in Paris for “around seven days” before the opening ceremony, in particular for the preparations for this unprecedented event, the prefecture of the Île-de-France region (Prif) announced on Friday. This ceremony, which promises to be grandiose, must take place between the Pont d'Austerlitz and the Pont d'Iéna in Paris, but the perimeter of the closure of the Seine has not yet been decided, according to a source close to the negotiations.