Garuda Indonesia cancelled 14 flights to Yogyakarta after a volcano about 19 miles north of the city erupted and forced authorities to close the local airport. The airfield, 520 km southeast of Jakarta on the island of Java, was closed at about 10:42 a.m. on Friday local time, and reopened at 2:17 p.m., state air-navigation operator AirNav Indonesia said Friday. Mount Merapi’s eruptions are minor, caused by accumulation of volcanic gases, and shouldn’t lead to further outbursts, the Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation at the nation’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, said in a statement, adding its status is “normal.” Other airlines that cancelled flights include those operated by the Lion Group. Indonesia is located on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and geological fault lines surrounding the Pacific Basin. The archipelago has about 120 active volcanoes. <br/>
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Air France KLM shares rose sharply Friday, recovering from six previous days of losses, as traders and fund managers said that an increase in its load factor had helped offset overall weak traffic figures for April. Air France KLM shares were up 6.3% at E7.52 in late-session trading, although the stock remains down by around 45% since the start of 2018. Earlier Friday, the airline had said traffic had fallen 2.6% in April, blaming a wave of strikes over pay conditions at the French brand that last week forced the CE of the Franco-Dutch group to resign. Nevertheless, the company added that its load factor had progressed by 0.4 percentage points. “The load factor has still managed to increase. It shows that the company is able to re-adjust its offer to the changing demands,” said a Geneva-based fund manager.<br/>
In his letter to the pilots’ union that had just forced his resignation, Jean-Marc Janaillac, CE of the Air France-KLM group, was fiery and defiant. He denounced the union’s allegations that the French state, which holds 14% of Air France-KLM, ran the company, calling it “a ridiculous and insulting vision”. He said it was the union’s obstruction that had “led us to today’s impasse, and this mess that we all regret”. However, it is no longer a mess that Janaillac will have to clear up: he leaves on Tuesday, having quit after staff rejected his pay proposal. Instead, given the size of the French government’s stake, it is a mess that will find its way on to the desk of President Emmanuel Macron. How Mr Macron handles the Air France-KLM situation will be an important test of his resolve and political direction in a dispute that has cost the company more than E300m, with each day of protest adding another E25m. “It is the incarnation of the French malaise which Macron is seeking to address in several — if not all — sectors,” said Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus, an aviation consultant and former secretary-general of the Association of European Airlines. With the French state’s outsized influence on the board thanks to its 23 per cent voting rights, the reform-minded president will be influential on two key decisions: who to support as the new CE and whether to keep open a possible bail out of the company. Both decisions represent a potentially defining moment for the French leader. The board meets to decide on the new chief executive this week. Story has more details about the current situation.<br/>