Sustainability and airline success now inexorably linked: Air France chief

The rise of sustainability as a challenge for the airline industry has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, to the point where business success is inexorably linked to carriers significantly reducing their environmental footprints, in the view of Air France CE Anne Rigail. “We need to be competitive to be sustainable, and if we are not sustainable, we will not have any customers any more in our aircraft,” Rigail states. “So both are totally linked.” Since 2019, sustainability has rocketed up the airline agenda, Rigail explains, amid rising expectations among the travelling public. And the imperative to address the issue is becoming “all the more acute” as living through a devastating global health crisis causes people to question the future impact of “ecological emergencies”. To meet this challenge, “we have to be very transparent on our environmental impact”, Rigail says. “Our duty is to reassure our customers that we are doing our utmost, with all the stakeholders… so that we can [offer] the most sustainable travel.”<br/>