Last month’s two-week strike by Air France pilots will cost the airline about €500 million (£393 million), the airline disclosed today.
Total passenger traffic fell 15.9% in September, with bookings for the next three months also down.
Taking into account the lost revenue during the strike and the knock-on impact of passengers staying away in future, the impact over 2014 will be “in the order of €500 million”, the airline’s finance director said.
“We need a few more days to finalise completely our estimates. But we think the impact on the third quarter will be in a range of €320-350 million,” Pierre-Francois Riolacci said.
He warned the knock-on consequences were harder to put a figure on but said there would be an impact both on the last quarter of the year and the first part of next year as Air France battles to win back its reputation.
“We made some savings (like in aviation fuel) because the planes were not flying,” he added.
“On the other hand, we had additional costs: putting passengers up, compensation or buying tickets from our competitors for some of our passengers, which we did not always get at the best price.”
Pilots at Air France waged the longest strike in the company’s history between September 15 -28 in protest at the group’s plans to expand its low-cost subsidiary Transavia France.
The airline sees the development of Transavia France as crucial to compete with budget rivals like easyJet and Ryanair.
But the expansion of Transavia was put on hold after the two sides agreed to talks. Pilots objected that the move of staff to Transavia would erode existing contracts.