Air France
Air France, stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France, and is headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. The airline is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and is one of the founding members of the SkyTeam airline alliance. As of 2013, Air France served 29 destinations in France and operates worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to 201 destinations in 78 countries and also carried 46,803,000 passengers in 2019. The airline's global hub is at Charles de Gaulle Airport, with Orly Airport as the primary domestic hub. Air France's corporate headquarters, previously in Montparnasse, Paris, are located at the Roissypôle complex on the grounds of Charles de Gaulle Airport, north of Paris.
Tracing its origins back to the 1910s, Air France was formed on 30 August 1933 through the merger of five existing airlines in France. During the Cold War, from 1950 until 1990, it was one of the three main Allied scheduled airlines operating in Germany at West Berlin's Tempelhof and Tegel airports. In 1990, it acquired the operations of French domestic carrier Air Inter and international rival UTA – Union de Transports Aériens. It merged with KLM to form Air France-KLM in 2003.
In 2018, Air France and its regional subsidiary Hop carried 51.4 million passengers. Air France operates a mixed fleet of Airbus and Boeing wide-body jets on long-haul routes, and uses Airbus A320 family narrow-body aircraft on short-haul routes. Air France introduced the Airbus A380 on 20 November 2009 with service from Paris to New York. Air France Hop operates the majority of its regional domestic and European scheduled services with a fleet of regional jet aircraft.
History
Formation and early years
The predecessor companies of Air France date back to Compagnie générale transaérienne, established in 1909, which flew the world's first scheduled passenger-carrying fixed-wing flights within France in 1913. Air France was formed on 30 August 1933 as a merger of five existing airlines: Compagnie Générale Aéropostale, which was founded in 1918 as Société des lignes Latécoère and, in some sources, the earliest lineage of Air France is stated to be 1918; Société Générale des Transports Aériens, which was founded in 1919; Compagnie Internationale de Navigation Aérienne, which was founded in 1920; Air Union, which was founded in 1923 and formed from the merger of Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes, which absorbed CGT, and Grands Express Aériens; and Air Orient, which was founded in 1929. SGTA was the first commercial passenger airline company in France; founded as Lignes Aériennes Farman in 1919, it began a weekly service between Paris and Brussels on 22 March 1919, the world's first international commercial aviation service. Société des lignes Latécoère began airmail services in 1924. These airlines built extensive networks across Europe, to French colonies in North Africa and farther afield prior to their merger into Air France in 1933.In 1936, Air France added French-built twin engine Potez 62 aircraft to its fleet featuring a two-compartment cabin that could accommodate 14 to 16 passengers. A high-wing monoplane, it had a wooden fuselage with composite coating while the wings were fabric-covered with a metal leading edge. Equipped with Hispano-Suiza V-engines, they were used on routes in Europe, South America and the Far East. Although cruising at only, the Potez 62 was a robust and reliable workhorse for Air France and remained in service until the Second World War with one used by the Free French Air Force.
During World War II, Air France moved its operations to Casablanca, Morocco. On 26 June 1945, all of France's air transport companies were nationalised. On 29 December 1945, a decree of the French Government granted Air France the management of the entire French air transport network. Air France appointed its first flight attendants in 1946. The same year the airline opened its first air terminal at Les Invalides in central Paris. It was linked to Paris Le Bourget Airport, Air France's first operations and engineering base, by coach. At that time the network covered 160,000 km, claimed to be the longest in the world. Société Nationale Air France was set up on 1 January 1946.
European schedules were initially operated by a fleet of Douglas DC-3 aircraft. On 1 July 1946, Air France started direct flights between Paris and New York via refuelling stops at Shannon and Gander. Douglas DC-4 piston-engine airliners covered the route in just under 20 hours. In September 1947, Air France's network stretched east from New York, Fort de France and Buenos Aires to Shanghai.
File:Lockheed L1049 F-BGNG Air France LAP 08.04.55 edited-2.jpg|thumb|right|A Lockheed Super Constellation of Air France at Heathrow Airport in April 1955
By 1948, Air France operated 130 aircraft, one of the largest fleets in the world. Between 1947 and 1965, the airline operated Lockheed Constellations on passenger and cargo services worldwide. In 1946 and 1948, respectively, the French government authorised the creation of two private airlines: Transports Aériens Internationaux – later Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux – and SATI. In 1949, the latter became part of Union Aéromaritime de Transport, a private French international airline.
Compagnie Nationale Air France was created by act of parliament on 16 June 1948. Initially, the government held 70%. In subsequent years, the French state's direct and indirect shareholdings reached almost 100%. In mid 2002, the state held 54%.
On 4 August 1948, Max Hymans was appointed the president. During his 13-year tenure he would implement modernisation practices centred on the introduction of jet aircraft. In 1949, the company became a co-founder of Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, an airline telecommunications services company.
Jet age reorganisation
In 1952, Air France moved its operations and engineering base to the new Orly Airport South terminal. By then the network covered 250,000 km. Air France entered the jet age in August 1953, flying the original, short-lived de Havilland Comet series 1A Paris-Rome-Beirut.In the mid 1950s, it also operated the Vickers Viscount turboprop, with twelve entering service between May 1953 and August 1954 on the European routes. On 26 September 1953, the government instructed Air France to share long-distance routes with new private airlines. This was followed by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport's imposition of an accord on Air France, Aigle Azur, TAI and UAT, under which some routes to Africa, Asia and the Pacific region were transferred to private carriers.
On 23 February 1960, the Ministry of Public Works and Transport transferred Air France's domestic monopoly to Air Inter. To compensate for the loss of its domestic network Air France was given a stake in Air Inter. The following day Air France was instructed to share African routes with Air Afrique and UAT.
The airline started uninterrupted jet operations in 1960 with the Sud Aviation Caravelle and the Boeing 707; jet airliners cut travel times in half and improved comfort. Air France later became an early Boeing 747 operator and eventually had one of the world's largest Boeing 747 fleets.
On 1 February 1963, the government formalised division of routes between Air France and its private sector rivals. Air France was to withdraw services to West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, Libya in North Africa, Bahrain and Oman in the Middle East, Sri Lanka in South Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand as well as New Caledonia and Tahiti. These routes were allocated to the new Union de Transports Aériens, a new private airline resulting from the merger of TAI and UAT. UTA also got exclusive rights between Japan, New Caledonia and New Zealand, South Africa and Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, as well as Los Angeles and Tahiti.
In 1974, Air France began shifting the bulk of operations to the new Charles de Gaulle Airport north of Paris. By the early 1980s, only Corsica, Martinique, Guadeloupe, most services to French Guiana, Réunion, the Maghreb region, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and one daily service to New York remained at Orly. In 1974, Air France also became the world's first operator of the Airbus A300 twin-engine widebody plane, Airbus Industrie's first commercial airliner for which it was a launch customer.
Concorde service and rivalry
On 21 January 1976, Air France operated its inaugural supersonic transport service on the Paris to Rio route with Anglo-French BAC-Aérospatiale Concorde F-BVFA. Supersonic services from Paris to Washington Dulles International Airport began on 24 May 1976, also with F-BVFA. Service to New York – the only remaining Concorde service until its end – commenced on 22 November 1977. Paris to New York was flown in 3 hours 23 minutes, at about twice the speed of sound. Approval for flights to the United States was initially withheld due to noise protests. Eventually, services to Mexico City via Washington, D.C., were started. Air France became one of only two airlines – British Airways being the other – to regularly operate supersonic services, and continued daily transatlantic Concorde service until late May 2003.By 1983, Air France's golden jubilee, the workforce numbered more than 34,000, its fleet about 100 jet aircraft and its 634,400 km network served 150 destinations in 73 countries. This made Air France the fourth-largest scheduled passenger airline in the world, as well as the second-largest scheduled freight carrier. Air France also codeshared with regional French airlines, TAT being the most prominent. TAT would later operate several regional international routes on behalf of Air France. In 1983, Air France began passenger flights to South Korea, being the first European airline to do so.
In 1986, the government relaxed its policy of dividing traffic rights for scheduled services between Air France, Air Inter and UTA, without route overlaps between them. The decision opened some of Air France's most lucrative routes on which it had enjoyed a government-sanctioned monopoly since 1963 and which were within its exclusive sphere of influence, to rival airlines, notably UTA. The changes enabled UTA to launch scheduled services to new destinations within Air France's sphere, in competition with that airline.
Paris-San Francisco became the first route UTA served in competition with Air France non-stop from Paris. Air France responded by extending some non-stop Paris-Los Angeles services to Papeete, Tahiti, which competed with UTA on Los Angeles-Papeete. UTA's ability to secure traffic rights outside its traditional sphere in competition with Air France was the result of a campaign to lobby the government to enable it to grow faster, becoming more dynamic and more profitable. This infuriated Air France.
In 1987, Air France together with Lufthansa, Iberia and SAS founded Amadeus, an IT company that would enable travel agencies to sell the founders and other airlines' products from a single system.
In 1988, Air France was a launch customer for the fly-by-wire Airbus A320 narrow-body twin, along with Air Inter and British Caledonian. It became the first airline to take delivery of the A320 in March 1988, and along with Air Inter, became the first airlines to introduce A320 service on short-haul routes.