Thousands more jobs to be cut at Air France


The restructuring will affect the group’s French operations, which employ more than 69,000 people.

Alongside the planned job cuts are proposals to phase out its costly fleet of Boeing 747s by 2016 and a review of its provincial bases in southern and western France, the Financial Times reported.

The fresh cost-cutting measures due to be announced today come as low growth in Europe and high fuel prices have left the airline with more to do on top of its Transform 2015 savings scheme which was outlined in 2011 with a plan to cut 5,100 jobs.

Frédéric Gagey, chief executive of the French unit, will detail the case for voluntary redundancies and route closures in the short-haul, medium-haul and cargo businesses.

Air France announced plans in June to cut 2,600 jobs through voluntary departures, joining western European rivals that are also slashing thousands of positions as competition from low-cost carriers intensifies.

 

In Europe, we are a low cost carrier. Let's intensify.

 

Because there will not be any measuring of our new scope provisions until January 2014. And if the company has failed to abide by the various ratios and provisions, they don't even have to show their plan to cure until July 2014.

The percentages in the Atlantic Joint Venture were hailed as a huge scope improvement because they ensured protections for Delta pilot jobs. When it became clear the company would not meet the percentage guarantees, an MEC administrator signed a letter extending the measuring period. Now everyone agrees there's no hope we'll be in balance by the extended deadline of our "fair share" of the flying.

The reality is that neither side can accurately describe our new scope as a failure or success until parameters are actually measured. That's January 2014...unless an MEC administrator signs another extension letter on our behalf.

Carl

 

In order to help fund their even more costly A380's

 

Delta had contractual obligations for other 50 seaters, yet they found a process to get out of them without Delta pilots caving on their scope section and self financing the rest. It could have been done this time too. But why would management want to take that route when DALPA was so eager to help breath new life into the failed RJ experiment.

Carl

 

You mean like the TA presentations you gave?

Your TA presentation and the word "facts" do not belong in the same sentence.

Carl

 

Hey Carl,

I know Dave. I trust him. He will do his best. He works for us and knows it. With him backing the council 44 propaganda I feel quite comfortable.

I just built a new beer fridge enclosure and stereo cabinet. Music, beer, hot tub babes and a bonfire. Come on down and I'll invite Dave over and we can talk shop and drink apple pie moonshine. You can't talk about the 747 though. I will always have jetvy or big shiny jet syndrome for the whale. TSquare will supply the babes.

 

I hear tsquare doesn't share though.

Carl

 

How do you get DCI to park 218 CR2s?

Well, it’s not by acquiring new mainline jets. We acquired MD-90s and they didn’t park any jets. We acquired 739s and they didn’t park any jets. I still haven’t heard of them parking CR2s because we acquired A321s and 330s. Seems to me, the acquisition of mainline jets and DCI parking 50-seaters has nothing to do with each other.

So in keeping with that precedence, if we had announced in March of 2012 that we’ve acquired all of SWA’s Boeing 717s that we’ve been looking at since 2010, how many CR2s would DCI have willfully just parked just cuz? 0. The two had nothing to do with each other.

Seems to me the only way you get DCI to park say 218 CR2s, that you’ve contracted them to fly, is you offer them something they want… 70 CR9s.
But under the current PWA at the time and a fleet of 720 jets, how many new CR9s was DAL allowed to acquire? 0.

So how do you get the pilots to allow 70 more CR9s without having to park a single CR7/E170 and not grow mainline?
So SWA in 2010 desperately wants out of the 717, the 717 is an MD product for commonality benefits, was a perfect 100 seater, would be cheap, Board loves it, could be acquired all at once to keep the price cheap and there was a possibility for a single category to save money (didn't happen of course but I do recall MD88 pilots being begged to bid it to save training costs).

At the same time you have a 50-seat fleet that's killing you with customers and costs.

So if you just could get more jumbo RJs to DCI to park 50-seaters and use the 717 to get the pilots to agree to it then look at all DAL would get (as stated by EB a month or so after we signed off on the deal):

Besides, how am I supposed to really believe that we got GK, Boeing, the Board, et. al. to risk all of this opportunity based on whether or not the dumb pilots voted in the first offer from the company on TA2012 and if they said no then oh well, lets keep those CR2s 4EVER! ?

So use the 717s you're going to acquire to get the pilots to say yes to more jumbo RJs and use that as leverage to get rid of the 50-seaters you hate. Tri-Winning.

What say you or RonRon?

 

I think I agree although I think you’re being sarcastic. I totally think system capacity isn’t something management is concerned about; anymore.

I’ve been told that thanks to us voting that contract in we’re about to grow from 720 jets to over 800, sometimes I hear 900. I remember that the 717s alone are 1,000 maybe 1,400 new pilots. That to me shows that when we vote yes, Delta goes from a capacity discipline mantra to an all-out capacity growth binge overnight and… well, wait… they still keep saying capacity discipline during the investor calls… and it’s not like we’re hiring for a growth binge…

/my sarcasm

So that kind of brings up a question. If we were really going to grow as much as was planned beyond the 767 mainline benchmark, why not just say to the pilots, “hey we need to park 50-seaters, the current contract is too limiting in that way, if we promise to grow to 801 jets would you allow us to keep the CR7s/E170s and we promise to put a cap at 450 DCI jets?”

Instead, we allowed more jet growth with no requirement for mainline beyond a BH ratio that is set to 1.56 at its best but that seems to be the ratio of DCI@450 and mainline domestic at its current size.

Why get rid of the mainline fleet size requirement and simultaneously set the ratio to a mere 1.56?

I still don't get the logic behind that.