Interesting read. Before reading about it here I came across an article in the Financial Times, which also mentioned that on the news AFKL shares dropped 4.6%. Not sure how they closed though.
The undertone of "KLM is great already, let's continue that. AF still isn't where it needs to be and drags the group's performance downwards" is everywhere. At least they are open about it, where in the past they often hid the individual performances.
Some interesting things in there. One thing was a real eye-opener for me: how the agreed relative growth of AF vs. KL constrained them to put more Y seats and less premium seats on AF planes. Moving to different KPIs (and a couple of other things) now allows them to put more premium seats on AF planes. Maybe that also means more Premiere seats, which would be in line with Ben Smith's point about making the product more difficult to market when it actually offers more destinations and flights.
On page 80 it says "full flat on all flights to US and Asia". Since by 2022 they want to have 100% full flat on long haul, by when would that "100% to US and Asia" be achieved? It would also mean no more A380s to New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai.... Sure, they could put 777-300ERs te replace the A380s on those routes (some drop in capacity), but then where to put the A380s? Conakry, Ouagadougou and Quito are tricky for this type of plane.
Business class on domestic: they used to have that until about 15 years ago on domestic feeder services to CDG. Now they bring it back across the domestic network, which is good for all those that at times pay very hefty prices. But then, it'll be a bit of a farce, as all they'll do is block a NEO seat between two other NEO seats - or do they plane to upgrade the domestic cabins to the standard of the European A319/A320/A321fleet? Probably not.
And, whilst not mentioned explicitly, I do hope that they'll move to 1-1 configuration on the E90 services on European routes for Business Class. Paying J fare and then being squeezed into a 2-2 configuration on those small planes is insulting.
I like the news about the GVA lounge, it needs an refresh. Someone knows when they'll start the work?