Air France announces voluntary redundancies

Économie

Air France annonce de nouveaux plans de départs volontaires

Air France a annoncé ce mercredi de nouveaux plans de départs volontaires, et estimé à 2.800 personnes le sureffectif en 2014. Cette annonce intervient alors que la compagnie aérienne doit faire face à des pertes d’exploitation pour la sixième année consécutive.

Traduction/Translation par/by Bill Nelson

AF announced this Wednesday a new voluntary redundancy plan, and estimated that the company is overmanned by 2,800 people. this announcement comes at a time when the company faces it’s sixth consequetive financial year loss.

B.N. Opinion: (Many AF staff are still indoctrinated with the ‘State airline’ mentality. French policy concerning projects would be to employ as many people as possible with each having a narrow and very specific focus. In global terms this can lead to frustration due to over-complication and over-communication. Meetings can go on for hours or even all day due to the amount of presentations. Change is coming slow but objections from staff due to possible loss of travel concessions will delay the rationalisation process. Many staff have built their lives around travel concessions, i.e. living in Nice but working from Paris. Possible disruption in lifestyles are on the cards due AF involvement with Tranasavia, the KLM/Dutch low-cost airline involvement now with south of France destinations. AF/KLM are effectively the one airline but AF, who already had partner airlines operating many routes (Regional, BritAir, AirLinair and Cityjet) have abandoned previous plans to offer low cost fares using these operators and gone with an already established low-cost carrier with Transavia. Over a year ago AF flight crew were offered positions with Transavia but the hostile reaction from French AF and partner airline staff, which had previously led to the sacking of former CEO Henri Geougeon over the partner Low-cost initiative, has stemmed the flow of pilots from one to the other. Of the remaining European legacy carriers, AF staff alone still resort to industrial action to air their grievances. French ATC also go on strike regularly.  It will be interesting to see the union (syndicats) reaction to this latest redundancy offer) 

About bill

Worked in the technical / engineering area as a Science Laboratory Technician and as an Aeronautics Engineer. The artistic side involves writing under the nom de plume of Billy Olsenn, his recently written play 'A Case of Wine' was staged by the players group Straight Make-Up at the 2012 Birr one act drama festival. It's next staging was in the one act circuit is in Cavan, at Maudebawn on Sat 10 Nov 2012. Then it was performed in the Bray, Co.Wicklow at the very popular one act festival in January 2013. Next play is FEAR. A dark tale about revenge on the cruel death of two pensioners by young thugs. Neighbours hatch a devious and dangerous plan to exact old-style revenge. Bill is a member of the Drama League of Ireland and his plays have been critically vetted and certified as original pieces of work by the DLI. Another literary project is that of commemoration of an aircraft crash on Djouce mountain in Wicklow in 1946. Bill wrote articles for the 50th, 60th and most recently the 70th anniversary, (12 Aug 2016) all were published in the Wicklow Times and ensured the survivors of the crash, all French Girl Guides, were not forgotten. Articles reproduced on this website. But mostly this site gives a more general European and specific French slant on popular and not so popular articles of French news, translated to English by the author. Each article is translated on a paragraph by paragraph basis so easy to read in either language and even possible to improve either language by comparison of the short English and French paragraphs. Amusez vous bien. The author is currently writing an easy to read technical aviation book centered around the Fokker 50. Another interest is that dealt with in another of Bill's websites www.realnamara.net, a Statue of the mother of God, Mary. It was erected in 1972 in Dublin, at the end of the Bull Wall near Clontarf, and my grandfather William Nelson, was the main instigator of that project. I give talks on the history of the statue and my grandfather's adventurous and dangerous life at sea. Technical assistance with each website is by J O'N.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.