AF seeks 1,500 redundancies

Talks to begin this week 

Air France is seeking 1,500 redundancies from its staff.

Formal talks are due to begin this week with its workers' council, the Comité Central d'Entreprise (CCE) with the airline hoping to reach agreement on a "voluntary redundancy plan" by October 21.

The airline, which announced a net loss of €426m for the first quarter in July, said it had been in talks over with the council in recent months over its trading position.

In a statement, AF said spoke of the "difficult economic environment" and said it had cut capacity by 5%.

It said it was also preparing a "reorganisation of its medium-haul business in terms of both network and product."  

AF added it planned to adapt to the "lower activity level" by implementing a voluntary redundancy plan.

It said the "timetable and terms of the plan, which could involve around 1,500 jobs" would be discussed in new talks starting this week.

In announcing its Q1 loss, the airline said global economic activity had stabilised at "unprecedentedly low levels, leading to a sharp decline in volumes and unit revenues."  

It said passenger revenues were down by 18.47% and cargo revenue down by 41.5%. The group suffered a total loss of 20.5% in revenue.

Plans to cut up to 3,000 jobs from its payroll by 2011 were announced by the airline in April.

It said it hoped to avoid compulsory lay offs by not renewing short term contracts and by a recruitment freeze.

www.airfrance.com