Air France -KLM is still restructuring is a painful process – with the group failing to agree with the French unions to agree with productivity plans so the Air France unit can swing back into profit.
With predictions that Air France’s long haul capacity will shrink in the next two years, Air France is taking action.
Routes that are up for the chop include ones in Asia and the Middle East where Air France faces intense competition, with 35 weekly frequencies to be axed
Firstly, the airline will accelerate its fleet changes including:
- 14 Airbus A340 aircraft to be retired
- Boeing 787 aircraft due to replace the A340s will not be replaced.
Finally, we get onto the part which will hurt the most – the people. With the cut of a number of routes and in an effort to save money, 2,900 redundancies are on the cards made up of:
- 300 pilots
- 900 cabin crew
- 1,700 ground staff
Worryingly for those staff – compulsory redundancies are possible.
And sadly, protesters did not like that in the least – with them storming into the meeting and attacking executives of the airline and ripping the shirts off them.
Air France isn’t particularly happy about that turn of events – with the airline stating:
Incident outside of the #AirFrance central works council: formal complaint to be filed for aggravated assault http://t.co/y8DiUSkHOH
— Air France Newsroom (@AFnewsroom) October 5, 2015
What to expect. Strikes are going to come to Air France – lets not beat about the bush. It’s only a matter of when.
And with today’s ugly scenes – I can’t imagine these strikes to pleasant at all for passengers.
Air France is struggling to be profitable, and with low-cost airlines eating the airline from the bottom, and Middle East Three/US Three eating from the top – sitting around and doing nothing sadly isn’t an option for the airline.
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