If the passengers still respond, the new variant of SARS-COV-2 leads the airlines to cancel flights and weighs on the trading classes.
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Will
the Omicron variant influence the activity of the airlines? For the time being, Air France-KLM seems in the eye of the cyclone. This area of temporary calm preceding the storm. His results would be a little above those of 2020 to such an epoque. According to the company, its level of activity, set at 79% of that of 2019, would be “a bit higher than the average level of December 2020, which had culminated at 76%.
But this relative accalmie might not last. Faced with the Omicron wave, flight cancellations are counted by thousands in airlines around the world. After the more than 8,000 flights canceled on the occasion of the Christmas weekend, it is 2,100 additional flights that have experienced the same fate, Monday, December 27, to which are already added 700 flights canceled for December 28. Monday, Air France maintained its program with 1,385 flights scheduled for the next weekend, or 30% increase compared to the first weekend of January 2021.
“We do not find a wave of cancellations” ticket purchases, indicates the company, which notes, however, “a small slowdown of reservations”. In other words, they fall, but do not collapse. The trend could accelerate nevertheless in the coming days. “We are rather in a logic of bookings in the short or very short term. Customers come back to a situation of wait-like. They are not planning in the future,” says the company.
Personal Particularly touched
If the passengers still answer, these are the drivers, hostesses and stewards that soon risk failing. According to our information, commercial travel personnel (PNC) would be particularly affected. “Every day, 50 PNC would declare themselves” covids “, that is to say positive to COVID-19 or contact cases,” says a leader of a union of hostesses and stewards. Navigating side, the company would begin to have “problems to set up crews for the holidays,” says a pilot syndicalist. In particular because of the “contacts” that multiply, he adds.
In the exam, in the cockpits of Air France, “Covid would affect many more copilots than the commanders”, he still know. On average, explains this pilot, “younger than the on-board commanders, the co-drots would have more social contacts”, so more risks of contracting CVIV-19.
At the leadership of the company, we cross the fingers: “Our system holds the road.” Grace, in particular, to the reinforcements and frameworks planned to help the soil staff or the reserve crews in Alert to supplement faulty drivers. Nevertheless, the resurgence of the epidemic could have consequences for Air France’s finances. The Omicron wave weighs on the airline stock prices, and in particular on that of Air France-KLM, which remains below the bar of 4 euros.
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