The two-week Air France pilots’ strike caused passenger traffic to fall by 15.9% and the cargo group for the Air France-KLM group by 17.7% in September, and had a negative impact of 320-350 million on the gross operating margin of the third quarter. This was reported by a note from the French-Dutch company, long a partner of Alitalia, before the change that led to the marriage between the former Italian flag company and the Etihad emirs.

The overall cost linked to the protests, warns the financial director Jean-Francois Riolacci, could be much higher, and reach up to 500 million euros, due to the decline in bookings also for the coming months and to some price reductions made by the French carrier to “return customers to airplanes”. The operating margin forecast for 2014 is therefore revised downwards, from 2.2-2.3 billion euros to 1.7-1.8. This negative impact, said Riolacci, “will find itself practically equivalent at the level of the net result”.

The internal conflict in the airline started for the direction project to focus on the low-cost sector, and on the subsidiary Transavia, for European routes, on which Air France suffers. The French subsidiary of Transavia has only 14 aircraft available, but the group’s goal was to reach 100 aircraft by opening Transavia Europe, with bases in Portugal and Germany. A project that sparked the anger of the pilots and the strike to the bitter end.