Air France-KLM: The transformational journey continues — September 2021

In the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Air France-KLM had been lumbered with an almost insurmountable €6.8bn mountain of debt and searing operational losses. It embarked on a process to restore profitability and financial health, and has spent the past decade deleveraging the balance sheet mostly from internally generated cashflow. By 2019 it had reduced its net debt/EBITDA ratio to an almost investment grade level of 1.5x (see chart), but over the decade had underperformed its European peers in terms of profits and returns on equity.