Air France Plans To Cut 465 Jobs Away

French airline Air France announced plans to cut 465 ground staff jobs on Monday, following first-quarter losses that showed the company suffering under pressure from low-cost rivals and high-speed trains.

The job cuts would be carried out through a voluntary departure programme and there would be no forced job losses, parent company Air France-KLM said in a statement.

“Representatives of personnel have been informed of a plan to seek up to 465 posts on the domestic network,” the statement read. “There will be no imposed departures.”

The first job cuts announced since the arrival of Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith last September are part of plans to reduce domestic flights by 15 percent over the next two years.

The company cited flagging performance of Air France's domestic short-haul flights, which amounted to a “loss of 189 million euros in 2018, a clear worsening compared with 2019 (96 million euros)”, according to the statement.

The announcement also came after Air France-KLM posted overall first-quarter losses of 303 million euros, compared with 185 million in the same period the previous year.

The departure plan would target 202 jobs on runway crews and 169 in passenger services at airports across the country.

The airports of Marseille and Orly in the Paris region would see the most losses (63 each), while airports serving Ajaccio and Bastia on the island of Corsica would both lose about a third of their staff, 54 and 50 jobs respectively.

Air France employs approximately 3,200 staff in metropolitan France.