Interview de partenaire avec Anne Rigail (Air France) - Catmi 2024

No, I would not allow myself to say that. And yes, I spent my entire professional life in the terminals at Orly and Roissy, alongside the flight attendants and stewards, and then in customer experience as you just said, so with a common thread that is the customer. And obviously among the customers, all customers with disabilities have always been part of our concerns when we define an offer on the ground or on board, and I must say more and more systematically and naturally, even if we are not at the end of the road, of course.

Exactly, we have regulations that depend on the country. We operate in 100 different countries, so we adapt, and 200 airport destinations. So I will perhaps talk about European regulations. The logic is that all airports with more than 150,000 passengers per year, so the vast majority, it is the airport operator that takes care of the customer with a disability and brings them to the plane. And it is at the moment they are on the plane that the airline takes over with the flight attendants and stewards that you know well. But the airline is in charge of receiving the assistance request. So we received last year 700,000 assistance requests of all kinds, and we transmit them to the airport operators. So we ask to receive them as early as possible to anticipate well, 48 hours before, and we strive to transmit them to the airport operator 36 hours before. So on board a plane, we are able to transport an assistance dog, a service dog, a guide dog. We are able to travel with one's wheelchair or not yet.

So very clearly, in any case, it is the airline that is responsible, even if the airport operators intervene, but the handling is done by our service providers. It is obviously always an event, fortunately exceptional, but we are fully aware of the absolutely terrible impact it can have on our customers in such cases. So we are also working to be able to indicate to the service providers how to handle these wheelchairs. We offer our customers to fill out labels that indicate the lifting points of the wheelchairs. Then obviously when this type of accident happens, even if it is exceptional, one of the challenges is compensation as quickly as possible and that goes beyond regulations because aviation regulations provide that we compensate a wheelchair with the same caps as luggage. However, these wheelchairs can represent considerable sums of money. And it's crazy, the regulation is the regulation, which is why we go beyond. You go beyond. Okay, I'm not going to ask you how much, you don't necessarily have a figure each time, it's a specific case that we look at in a specific way.

Indeed, we have responsibilities as a carrier but also as an employer. Air France is the largest private employer in Île-de-France. And employment of personnel with disabilities is a real concern in the positive sense of the term. Focus: we have 1,800 employees that we support, obviously through workplace adaptations, through a real focus in our recruitment. It is a real target. Clearly, we have disability agreements, support, facilitation, an internal association, the Goéland association, which allows us to train as many of our staff as possible. We also have cabin crew, and also managers for cabin crew for the reception of our customers, but also for our managers to best adapt positions, conditions, the retention of our employees.

Yes, we are in the industry in a positive recruitment phase, but we have 1,000 additional staff for the Games, both in the terminals and among the commercial cabin crew. So yes, we are organizing, hand in hand with Paris Airports. We are very proud to already be a partner of these Games, the first Paralympic Games in France. One of the challenges will be to welcome as smoothly as possible, to transport as best as possible the equipment, the wheelchairs of our athletes. And very clearly, we are preparing with the ambition to keep as a legacy a real improvement of these reception processes. We try to identify the delegations, it's 4,500 Paralympic athletes that we expect, it's also, I believe, 3.5 million spectators who will come for the Paralympic Games. So it's a huge logistical organization, a lot of responsibility, a lot of pressure, but positive pressure because we are obviously extremely proud to welcome and to offer check-in at the Olympic villages and delegations. We really try to facilitate the handling of both luggage and athletes and spectators in the best conditions. Baggage check-in is already possible today at check-in in some partner hotels in Paris. We are training, but we will offer to free up time for athletes and delegations to come to the Olympic village so that we can take care of them, I would say pre-check-in, so that when they arrive at the airport, they are a little relieved of all these worries.