Air France-KLM on Friday reported €7.6 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 14.1 percent year over year, and an increase of 8 percent more passengers than a year prior, “in spite of the inflationary context,” CEO Benjamin Smith said in an earnings statement.
On an earnings call, Smith credited “the strong and sustained demand for air travel,” as well the company’s ability to “significantly improve the robustness of our operations at our main bases,” he said. “I’m very happy to report that operations have remained steady at Amsterdam Schiphol since the holidays in May.”
The company also implemented improvements to its operational processes and reinforced training programs for both internal and external staff, Smith said.
As for corporate demand, “it continues to edge up in all of our sectors, with the exception of the domestic French market, which continues to be very far from where we were in 2019,” Smith said. “We see decreases in demand, and we’re pulling capacity accordingly.”
The company is “not seeing 100 percent as of yet,” and for France, it does not expect it will see 2019 levels. “We probably won’t, well, we’re not going to get there,” Smith said.
Still, Smith said that the North Atlantic and South Atlantic markets were performing “extremely well,” both on the business front as well as into Paris for high-end leisure. “Our premium cabins are doing very, very well,” he said.
The company also reported second-quarter net income of €604 million, up from €324 million in Q2 2022. Capacity was at 92 percent compared with Q2 2019. Air France-KLM projects third-quarter capacity to be about 95 percent of Q3 2019 levels, with fourth-quarter capacity above 95 percent and full-year capacity at that level.
