Air France boss says UK must play by the EU court’s rules after Brexit

As the head of Europe’s largest intercontinental airline, Jean-Marc Janaillac can speak with authority on the complexities of cross-border travel. He carries some political insight, too, because he is CE of a business, Air France-KLM, that is 17%-owned by the French government. At the intersection of pan-European travel and politics lies Brexit, of which Janaillac is a dispassionate observer. After all, it is not his business that will be most affected by a split between London and Brussels. Janaillac says Britain leaving the EU is neither “an opportunity nor a catastrophe” for a business created by the merger of the French and Dutch national airlines in 2004. “For Air France-KLM, and other airlines, the British market is important but it is not a huge part of our activity. I think it is more a problem for British airlines than continental operators,” he said. The 64-year-old gives a tour d’horizon of the issues facing British rivals come the leaving date of March 2019. They range from the threat of not being able to fly beyond British borders to having to having to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice – the latter being a red line in the Brexit negotiations for Theresa May. But first, the basics: will the likes of BA and easyJet be able to fly to Europe once the UK has exited the EU? Janaillac says that the British government should be planning for the worst-case scenario, in which a new agreement between the UK and the EU does not materialise. This would mean flights between Britain and the continent could be grounded because the UK will no longer be a member of the European Common Aviation Area. Story has more details.<br/>