The COVID-19 crisis has continued to spread in recent days, leading many countries to take increasingly stringent measures in an attempt to slow the rate of spread of the epidemic. Some countries have imposed constraints on the movement of travellers from France, the Netherlands or more broadly from Europe. In France, the transition to a level 3 public health emergency requires the closure of all non-essential services since last weekend.
Faced with these growing restrictions on the possibility of travelling and a strong downward trend in demand which has resulted in a drop in traffic and sales over the last few weeks, the Air France-KLM Group is obliged to gradually reduce its flight activity very significantly over the next few days, with the number of available seat kilometers (ASK) potentially decreasing between -70% and -90%.
As a result of this reduction in capacity, Air France will ground its entire Airbus 380 fleet and KLM its entire Boeing 747 fleet.
Air France will set up a massive partial unemployment plan, touching 80% of the nearly 40,000 employees.