Week-long cabin crew strike set to cost Air France €40m

A week-long strike by cabin crew at Air France could cost more than €40 million, the chief financial officer of the carrier’s parent group said on Wednesday.

Two of the airline’s cabin crew unions called the strike, which started on Wednesday after talks on renewing a collective labour agreement broke down.

Parent group Air France-KLM earlier on Wednesday said a strike by pilots in June had cost it around €40 million and CFO Pierre-Francois Riolacci said the cabin crew strike could cost more than that, or "several dozens of million euros".

Air France has said it will cancel around 13 per cent of the flights planned for Wednesday as a result of the strike.

For Thursday, the airline will cancel around 30 per cent of short and medium-haul flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle, while keeping around 90 per cent of long-haul flights running. Around 80 per cent of domestic flights will operate, it said.

The airline is, for example, trying to keep flights running between Paris and Amsterdam in order to transfer passengers onto the KLM network, which is not affected by the strike.

Reuters