Thanks to state aid, and in particular to partial unemployment, which made it possible to eliminate a minimum of jobs, the airline company escaped the mass cancellations which hit its foreign comrades due to contamination.
The presidential “whatever the cost” paid off for Air France. While thousands of flights are canceled around the world, especially because of the breakthrough of the omicron variant, the French airline is not blinking. Some flights have been canceled “Because of technical or meteorological problems, but nothing to do with omicron”, assures Release a company spokesperson. Its level of activity is 79% compared to that before the crisis and for the first weekend of the year 2022, 1385 flights are planned against 1080 that of January 2-3, 2021. An increase of 30 %.
If Air France is less vulnerable than its competitors – over Christmas weekend alone, they were forced to cancel more than 8,000 flights – it is thanks to short-time working which was implemented in worst of the health crisis, in 2020 and early 2021. The pilots and flight crew of the French company were able to benefit from it while a good number of those working for other foreign companies were made redundant, because of the virtual shutdown. -total international air traffic.
“Some have fired or retired nearly 50% of their pilots”, assesses aviation specialist Xavier Tytelman in Le Figaro. Positions have also been cut at Air France, but in smaller proportions: 7,500 in total, the group announced in June 2020, distributed among pilots, cabin crew (stewards and hostesses) and ground-based staff. In total, the Air France-KLM group has more than 80,000 employees.
The State, which is the main shareholder of the airline with 28.6% of its shares, had come to its aid in April 2020 by mobilizing another seven billion euros.
“Emergency cushion”
When traffic resumed on a large scale in the summer of 2021, the competitors were therefore already under pressure. Since then, the omicron variant and its cascading contaminations have added up, making the situation alarming. This is not the case on the Air France side. “Unlike the American and Chinese companies, we have reserve crews, pilots and stewards, who can be called in at any time when there is a shortage. This emergency cushion is enough to absorb the absences, linked to the Covid or not ”, assures the spokesperson of the company.
President of the National Union of Commercial Flight Personnel (SNPNC) of Air France, Christelle Auster qualifies these statements and speaks of a “Little tension” on the pilots’ side. Because in this category of staff, rotations are less easy. “Unlike a flight attendant who can fly on any type of aircraft, the captain of a Boeing 777 will not be able to fly an Airbus A320”, she illustrates, while ensuring that there is no worry at the moment. In addition, the elimination of more than 1,000 positions among the stewards and hostesses that she represents after a collective termination of the agreement has not had any impact on their activity, assures the unionist.
Planes that fly, a union in phase with its management: all is well for the company which has even started to repay the loan guaranteed by the State (PGE) of 4 billion euros from which it had benefited in April. On December 13, Air France announced that it had reimbursed the first 500 million. The remaining 3.5 billion will have to be paid by 2025.