AIR FRANCE APOLOGIZES TO TRAVELLERS FOR POOR SERVICE IN THE PAST TWO YEARS
D
ear Customers,
After 2 years of border closures that have grounded many of our aircrafts, we are happy to see you on board and travelling with us again. For months, we have been preparing for this summer to welcome you in the best conditions. To this end, we have maintained our investments in our fleet renewal, in the comfort of our cabins and in our lounges, and also resumed recruitment from 2021, despite the very great uncertainties related to the sanitary crisis. We have hired 300 pilots, 200 mechanics, many seasonal workers in our stations to be ready for the restart of our activity and in particular for summer 2022. In addition to our own resources, we also asked all our subcontractors and partners last January to prepare for a strong demand for travel, at 90% of the 2019 level. Our entire fleet is in service this summer and we have re-opened almost our entire network, with 196 destinations. We have thus prepared ourselves with maximum anticipation to accompany you on your holiday, being well aware of the difficulty of restarting our airport and aeronautical ecosystem, which had abruptly stopped in 2020 and had been idling ever since. We were on the right track with our operational performance back at satisfactory levels in the first quarter of this year. Unfortunately, we must note that over the past two weeks, our operations have been severely degraded by external issues, whether they are third party industrial action outside of our control or infrastructure malfunctions. This may have led to delays in your arrival at your destination, delayed luggage deliveries or even flight cancellations imposed on us by agencies to preserve the functioning of Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. I would like to offer my deep and sincere apologies to those of you whose travels have been affected by this situation. I would also like to assure you that all of us at Air France are working tirelessly at your service to resolve each individual situation, in particular in terms of baggage forwarding, which may have been delayed
last Friday due to industrial action outside of our control that have greatly disrupted the operation of baggage sorters. Re-routing all delayed baggage will take up to several days. Aware of the difficulties this causes you, we thank you for your patience. In parallel, the Paris Airport Authority (ADP) are fully mobilized to find solutions to the current difficulties under their control and put an end as soon as possible to the major disruptions of recent days. Nevertheless, I wish you an excellent summer while finally being able to enjoy the freedom to travel again, and I also want to reassure you of our total engagement to bring back as soon as possible smooth operations. Dear Customer, please accept my best regards,
Anne Rigail, Air France CEO
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