When Air France KLM announced that it would have to make 2,900 job cuts this week — some of them compulsory - a small group of at-risk workers took things into their own hands, literally. The company's deputy head of human resources had his jacket and shirt ripped off and he had to flee a management meeting over a fence, pursued by angry staff.
The airline, faced with competition from low-cost carriers such as easyJet and Ryanair on short-haul routes and Middle Eastern and other legacy carriers on long-haul routes, has put in place a restructuring plan called Perform 2020.
As part of this effort to increase profitability, it is re-assessing its long-haul network and it has announced it will close five routes and cancel 35 weekly departures by 2017. The airline said this week, "The schedule modifications will focus on routes where losses are highest, serving principally Asia and the Middle-East."
It will cut its long-haul fleet by 14 aircraft, accelerating the retirement of Airbus A340s and not replacing them with Boeing 787s as had been planned.
Our chart this week looks at Air France KLM's long-haul passenger business. It shows the level of traffic (measured in revenue passenger kilometres) on long-haul over the past two years.
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What the chart reveals is that there has been little decline in long-haul traffic over this time. The only blip is from September 2014 when the airline's staff were on strike. This month's traffic figures show that the airline has returned to normality.
The airline's load factor also looks healthy, up in the mid 80s of percent but gross figures like these can hide loss-making routes and competition is intense. The airline says its focus is initially on reducing fixed costs. Unfortunately for Air France staff, fixed costs here is a euphemism for salaries.