Full Video: Air France CEO at Skift Forum Europe 2022

Skift Forum Europe

Skift Forum Europe was held in London, England on March 24, 2022. Find out about future Skift events through the link below.

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Anne Rigail, CEO of Air France, had a lot to talk about during Skift Forum Europe 2022. Coming out of Covid, the flag carrier faces upheaval with the war in Ukraine and resulting spikes in fuel costs. But despite this, she remains bullish for the future, she told Seth Borko, Skift's senior research analyst, during the event in London on March 24.

Yes, fares will go up (economy-class fares on roundtrip flights to North America could rise by $33 and in business class by $110), and yes, Asia now takes longer to reach, but South and North America demand is coming back strongly.

Watch the full video of the conversation, as well as read a transcript of it, below, and find out what else the CEO had to say about leisure versus corporate travel patterns, sustainability and much more.

Seth Borko: Hello everybody. Hello. Anne, thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited to have the CEO of one of the largest airlines in Europe and in the world with us at the forum. So thank you.

Rigail: Thank you.

Borko: And just a quick reminder, everyone, we're going to be having a conversation here, but we can take some questions. So if you any questions, let me know, we'll do our best to work them into the conversation. Anne, I don't want this to be the entire conversation, but I did want to start off asking you about Ukraine and the impact on your business and on the travel industry. Just give us, what has been the impact to Air France and to the airline industry of this conflict?

Rigail: Well, of course, the situation in Ukraine is quite tragic. You know how aviation is about connecting people, connecting cultures and economies, and in that sense, it's a vector of peace. So we had to stop our flights to Ukraine on February 21 for obvious security reasons, and then, our flights to Russia on February 27 when France and then Europe closed their air space to Russia. So our priorities have been first, of course, to ensure the safety of our staff on the ground, and then, to find alternative routes, to avoid Russian air space for the flights to Asia, flights to Japan, to South Korea and to China. This has been done within a day.

We have not canceled any passenger flights, thanks to the commitment of all our teams. Of course, with longer flight times, especially in the way back, so I think the flight time from Narita is now 15 hours and 40 minutes, so quite long. It's