Air France-KLM To Launch New Airline That Combats Gulf Carriers

Airlines have been known to sometimes do drastic measures in order to gain even more customers or persuade them to return to their airline. Air France together with KLM, its partner company, lately made some headlines for doing such. In order to gain back some of its customers from gulf carriers, Air France-KLM just recently unveiled its plans to make a brand new long-haul airline that will be more competitive against its Middle Eastern contenders.

Jean-Marc Janaillac, the new CEO of Air France - KLM has announced lately his upcoming plans for the said airline. He even has a 9-point initiative to fully see them all put into action and says that the airline will be "fighting back on every front". As reported by Ben Mutzabaugh of USA Today, "The new unit - so far unnamed -- would fly international routes where heavy competition and fare-discounting have made it difficult for Air France-KLM to be profitable. Air France-KLM said the airline would fly up to 10 aircraft by 2020 and that newly opened routes would make up about a third of its schedule."

In order to contend with its cheaper rivals, the new airline that Air France-KLM will launch will have a crew that will be hired on different terms from the main airline company. The new airline is packaged as "simple, modern and innovative", it also targets to offer passengers "customers business and leisure destinations with standards comparable to those of Air France in terms of product quality and the professionalism of the crews."

This plan seems to give a glimpse of just how Air France-KLM's new head Janaillac is single-minded in getting it back to the lead of the airline pack and get back the market shares Air France-KLM has lost all these years because of job losses and disagreements with trade unions. BBC News quoted Air France CEO Janaillac saying, "The status quo is not an option. We must launch a new dynamic to return to a leadership position in our markets."