Faced with the collapse of reservations since the start of the coronavirus crisis, Air France invites its employees to ask for holidays or to use their time savings account. And for those who have already posed every day for which they benefit, the company offers ... unpaid leave. Another option proposed by the company's management: a reduction in working time in certain sectors, underlines France Inter.
The management of the airline has informed its 45,000 employees that these measures will only be done on a voluntary basis. "We will fasten the belts and see when we get out of this turbulent zone," said a union delegate to Franceinfo, which hopes to restore the situation by the beginning of summer.
These measures put on the table already illustrate the difficulties encountered by the company weakened by the fall in the number of reservations and the multiplication of cancellations. In February, the group estimated that the only suspension of flights to China would cost it between 150 and 200 million euros.
Half-mast reservations for the summer
Since then, Air France no longer wishes to communicate new data. A silence that suggests increasingly colossal losses for the group. Without passengers, the company would have halved the frequencies on certain Asian destinations, notably South Korea and Singapore, specifies Le Monde.
And the outlook does not look good. Union sources have already mentioned reservations at half mast for the summer, for lack of visibility.
In an attempt to limit costs, the company has already anticipated maintenance operations for a number of aircraft. Finally, it has also redeployed flights to areas less exposed to the virus such as the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean or Africa.
Air France is not the only company to use major means to reduce its costs. German company Lufthansa plans to cut flights by up to 50%. It will also freeze hirings and encourage its employees “to take immediate leave without pay”.
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Forced unemployment at Cathay Pacific
Similarly, to rectify its accounts, the Emirates Airline company based in Dubai proposed in early March to its staff to take up to… a month of leave without pay.
“In view of this availability of additional resources and given the fact that many employees wish to use their leaves, we have offered our employees the possibility of benefiting from leave or requesting it for unpaid leave of one maximum duration of one month, "said Adel al Redha, director of operations at Emirates.
In Asia, the Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific in dire straits has made it stronger, by expressly asking its staff to take three weeks off without pay. Or forced unemployment for its 27,000 employees.
