Air France, KLM moving closer together, not pulling apart: report

Air France and KLM have been working on a new governance structure for the joint airline, reports Volkskrant. The aim is to further integrate the two companies and reduce the power of the holding company Air France-KLM. The airline plans to appoint current board members of KLM to the Air France board and vice versa as a part of tightening the integration. The drastic change in governance is being prepared and will probably take several months, according to an inside report allegedly possessed by Volkskrant. The holding company Air France-KLM should get less influence under the new structure, with two airlines getting more autonomy. "The parties are working on rewriting their current agreements," a senior manager of the company is quoted saying by Volkskrant. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment is also working on promoting agreements between Air France and KLM. Minister Wilma Mansveld was recently in Paris to secure agreements on employment in the Netherlands and the logistics hub at Schiphol. The cooperation between the two airlines dates back to 2003. Initially, the merger helped lowering the costs and thus helped the profitability of the company. Now, however, the company is struggling with high costs of its personnel, especially in the wake of low-cost carriers that operate at a greater cost efficiency.