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)