Ben Smith (Air France-KLM) : Lauréat du Prix du Manager de l'année aux BFM Awards 2023

Thank you, Christophe. First of all, it's a true honor to accept this award on behalf of my 78,000 colleagues in our group. Really, it's thanks to them that I'm here tonight, and it's thanks to them that Air France's results over the last 12 months reached levels we wouldn't have imagined two or three years ago during that nightmarish experience we went through with the COVID crisis. I'm truly delighted and truly proud. But we'll talk about the awards in a moment.

First of all, if you know our company and our brand, our colleagues are incredibly proud of our enterprise. They have an incredible level of professionalism and an experience that you don't see elsewhere in Europe. So we start from a solid base. We work in a way where trust, respect, responsibility, transparency, and confidentiality are very important. During the COVID period, we made sure to transmit all the information we had — through video, letters, emails, WhatsApp, text messages — to ensure that everyone was connected at all times, knew the news, and understood what the company was doing to come out of this crisis in the best possible position.

We've done a lot of transformation. First, we really started simplifying our fleet. When I arrived five years ago, our fleet was very complicated, so we rationalized it. We made fairly difficult decisions. During the COVID period, it would have been really easy to back down or stop the orders we had placed before COVID. And Guillaume, who was on stage with me a few minutes ago — we purchased 200 more aircraft directly from Airbus. So coming out of this crisis, we continued our transformation so that the aircraft would be available after the crisis and so that our employees, our pilots, our cabin crew, our mechanics, all our back-office colleagues would be in place so we could restart as quickly as possible. The fact that we were in that position and that all my colleagues were totally mobilized, we managed to return to our 2019 figures. And the fact that many other companies went bankrupt really positioned us to capture more market share than we had in 2019.

In our industry, it's a real challenge. First, coming out of this crisis, the supply chain is really saturated. We have training issues with many of my colleagues. To balance all of this, to ensure our aircraft are in good shape and to put our service in place — it's a real balancing act. And today we're missing materials, there are issues with engines for example. There's a lot of pressure on my colleagues, but I'm very proud that even with all this, we're moving forward. So with the example you just mentioned, yes, it's a challenge when planes are delayed, but we adapt.

We have a lot of flexibility. 30% of our fleet in our group has virtually zero remaining debt on those aircraft. So if there's a moment in the future where we need to remove a lot of aircraft, the cost impact on us isn't that high. And having next-generation aircraft to ensure we can meet our environmental commitments is absolutely necessary — we need a fleet with new-generation technology.

We're going to get there. We'll have enough, we'll be able to put 100% in aircraft, we'll truly be able to decarbonize with SAF. It's a challenge, it's a commitment we've taken, and we're taking it very seriously. We're going to get there, I'm convinced. We have a path we're following. In fact, today — I don't know if you're aware — France is the largest buyer of SAF in the world. We're not even in the top five buyers of traditional fossil fuels. So that gives you an example of the importance we place on decarbonization.

Like in all industries, prices are tied to supply and demand and the cost of inputs. Fuel is today our most important expense. So it depends not only on traditional fossil fuels but also on sustainable aviation fuels — that makes up a large part of what ticket prices will be.

Thank you, thank you.