Air France/KLM – Which has better fleet economics?

The European Union is different than other regions with respect to its focus on “green initiatives”, especially the commercial aviation sector. The European Commission has proposed a carbon tax on jet fuel from 2023 and the costs of running an airline in Europe will keep rising.  Therefore, despite the pandemic and slow international traffic recovery, EU airlines are going to keep their fleets as young as they can afford. 

For this post, we are going to look at Air France and KLM, part of the same group but with a very different fleet mix.  Let’s start with what we know about their current fleets.