Air France bows to union pressure over low cost Europe airline
Air France has offered to scrap proposals to expand its low cost European airline Transavia in efforts to end a strike by pilots.
In a statement by Air France and KLM, the companies’ chief executives said despite ambitious plans to grow the brand and create more jobs, the damaging strike needed to be stopped.
It said: "Our Transavia project is a 100% pro-France project. It is about developing Transavia to encourage growth in France and quickly create more than 1,000 jobs in France (including 250 pilot jobs)," said the chief executives of Air France-KLM, Alexandre de Juniac, and Air France, Frederic Gagey in a joint statement.
"With the withdrawal of the Transavia Europe project, there is now no reason to strike because there are no longer any concerns about relocation.
"We therefore call on the striking pilots to return to work immediately," they said.
Pilots have been on strike for 10 days grounding half of Air France’s fleet costing it nearly £12m a day. They fear lower rates of pay compared to the company’s core business. The pilots’ union is yet to respond to the offer.
More than 380 of today’s Air France flights have already been cancelled. There were 564 cancellations yesterday and 558 on Tuesday.
Diane
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