results that we just released
today for q4. And for the whole year 2022. We started out early
22 was a bit difficult with Omicron. And the issues in
Ukraine. But we had a fantastic summer, especially across the
Atlantic, we had more capacity on the Atlantic than we did in
2019. Africa was always a market that was resilient throughout
the crisis, South America took a little bit came out a little
later than the North American terms of traffic rebound. And
then because of the Russian overflight ban, there has been
some benefits for us, it's been a lot of capacity removed from
the market to and from the US because of the inability of
flight over Russia. So our, you know, our traffic to India in
that area has been really strong coming from North America. And
then with Asia, being, you know, a big portion of it being
closed. This new announcement that the Chinese government has
made in their decisions on relaxing most of the
restrictions is a very welcomed news for us. So, you know, when
you look at 2023, we're quite excited to have choices on where
to deploy our capacity. So demand is still strong, yields
are good capacity is quite tight in many of our markets. Paris is
a very attractive market, you know, more attractive than we've
seen in the past people who were this pent up demand, you know,
Paris is pretty high up on the list. And Amsterdam, of course,
even with the operational issues we faced last year, is still a
great transfer hub. And we expect it to to continue. So
despite the and that's despite the economic uncertainty, you
see the cost of living crisis, etc, you still see people
wanting to travel after two years of being stuck. You see
people happy to spend on tickets actually quite expensive at the
moment. Yes, we're seeing demand very strong across all of our
all of our market segments. Did pent up demand, as you as you
mentioned, but also I think, many of our customers and new
customers that we have a reprise reprioritized travel, it's moved
up in terms of priority on their, from their, what they
have what they use or disposable income for. So we're, we're
seeing strong demand, and a very positive. Well, anyone that's
tried to book a holiday like this. So those two tickets being
very expensive, like much more expensive than before the
pandemic and of course, there's been problems of staff shortages
and high fuel prices, but fuel prices have gone down now. So do
you see prices staying at that level? Or are we likely to see
prices going a little bit down? Look, a big, big driver of price
increases have been to increase fuel. So us as well as, as well
as our major competitors, are putting a lot of effort into
making sure that our margins are not hit, because of the increase
in fuel. And as of today, the marketplace is absorbing those
charges. And at Air France KLM. In particular, they are fast,
the premium leisure segment has just really exploded. And the
the I'd say the strength of that demand very different business
travel are very different from price conscious.
leisure travel, we saw in the past premium leisure filling up
our first class cabins and business class cabin Premium
Economy. It's making up for the difference. That's lagging on
the return of business traffic. And this traffic seems to be
very, very resilient to price increases may ask you about
Schiphol airport because of course the base for for KLM
there's been some operational issues there. There's some
reduced capacity going forward. So how is this looking for you
how it's impacting your business? Because it has
impacted in q4 in particular? So are you talking to the Dutch
government? How do you see this issue going forward? So this
past summer, many airports in in Europe experienced operational
challenges, the business came back faster than someone
predicted. At our group, we had predicted the return. So at
alpha cars, we had enough pilots, unlike other carriers
were not dependent on say for example, the triple seven dash
nine delivery so we had the number of aircraft that we'd
hoped to have. And in some cases with it with some small delays,
we were able to keep aircraft that were scheduled to to retire
keep those a little bit longer. So from a fleet perspective,
both at klm and Alphonse, I think we were better position
than many of our competitors. Before I get to KLM and to
Amsterdam, in Paris, we had one of the best summer operations
that we've ever seen. So from a from an operational perspective
at at YC. It was quite good. Amsterdam with the inflationary
situation in the Netherlands which was relatively high. We
saw quite
A number of employees, baggage and some of the service sectors
leave the industry. So quite difficult to attract new staff
or staff to replace those jobs and both insecurity, which is
handled by the airport authority, as well as baggage
handlers, service workers at klm. So we've had a shortage of
people, which has resulted in the summer being artificial
limits, put on the number of customers and go through the
terminal. So there were operational issues unlike not
unlike many other airports in Europe. So this was not unique
to KLM. However, the Dutch states decision to reduce the
number of slots available at Schiphol we believe is wrong.
The objectives that they had in terms of reducing noise and co2
were totally aligned with that were completely aligned with the
Dutch state on that. We just are totally we do not understand.
It's incomprehensible in the way that it's being done on a
unilateral basis with no discussion with stakeholders on
how to reach those same goals and in other ways, which I
believe we can do.