Air France Announces More Job Losses

It now seems that Air France has just reviled some new plans to cut 1,700 jobs by next year. This announcement came just after posting a worse than expected quarterly loss. This big loss is mostly due to the fuel hedging losses and poor cargo traffic seen by Air France. The carrier has already cut some 3,000 jobs in the year to March 31, 2010.

Air France, which is Europe’s largest airline, has now reported a net loss of €147 million in the quarter ending September. This is, of course, being compared to the loss of only €27 million that was seen in the same time frame last year. The carrier did note that its passenger operations would have made a profit in this period had it not been for the negative effects of the fuel hedges.

Passenger revenues were down 17.2 percent to €4.34 billion, but the effects were largely offset by a 4.4 percent reduction in capacity. The Air France chief executive, Pierre Henri Gourgeon, said that the company’s performance was improving after deep losses in the first quarter, and that is what adapting rapidly to the environment can do.

Air France also said that its revenues had fallen 20 percent to €10.8 billion for the six months to the end of September. It fell into an operating loss of €543 million in the first half against a profit of €592 million last year.

The chief executive of Air France went on to say that this is a very big crisis for the airline industry as a whole. It is not only affecting passengers, but cargo businesses as well. The carrier has seen a 40.5 percent drop in cargo sales, which has resulted in a €127 million operating loss.