Company observation:

1 – Introduction and historical points (1 paragraph)

Air France was created in 1933 by the union of several aerial French companies. In 1935 it become a public corporation, submitted to the government control, before to be considered as a public service corporation in 1937.

After the World War 2, the democratisation of the air transport permitted Air France to create the first alliance, named Europair (then renamed Air Union) with Alitalia, Lufthansa and KLM which principle is to not doing competition and to behave as an association.

However, with the 70’s oil crisis and the surcapacity of planes due to the end of the Vietnam War, the market is changing and appears Charter companies which are breaking the price rules.

Nevertheless, Air France is still confident and relies on its production tool and focus on increasing its sales. AF puts in practice a radical commercial strategy: opening agencies, increased staff, regional networks etc. Also, in the freight domain, AF and its competitors aim to improve and maximize the service to companies and it works (exceptional growth during the seventies and eighties).

In the 80’s, AF introduce the New European Service with an improved business class (higher service, prices closer to economical class) which allows the group to redynamize the sales.

From the nineties, Air France began to extend his group and bought several companies.

In 1999, the group introduce the project of a world alliance, which would work 10 years. Thus SkyTeam born in 2000 and contained 4 members and grew up to become the first European air group in 2004 by the merger of the French and the Dutch companies: Air France-KLM.
The group operates in several kinds of businesses:

• Passengers transport • Shipping • Aircraft maintenance • Plane rental, on-board catering, aircraft cleaning etc.

In fact, the most important part of their activity is the first one (it represents