Good day, and welcome to the Air France-KLM full year 2021 results presentation. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ben Smith, CEO, and Mr. Steven Zaat, CFO. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. I'm here today at the Air France-KLM offices near Paris- Charles de Gaulle Airport with Steven Zaat, our Group CFO, Pieter Elbers, KLM CEO, Anne Rigail, Air France CEO. We'd like to welcome you to the Air France-KLM 2021 full year results call. I'd like to start by thanking all our colleagues across all our airlines and business units for the incredible hard work and dedication they continue to display throughout this unprecedented period. In addition, we're also very grateful to the French and Dutch states for their continued support during this challenging period. Most importantly, I'd like to thank our customers for their trust and loyalty. Throughout 2021, the uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis and constantly changing local measures remained a challenge.
Today, with the growing effects of vaccines and milder Omicron symptoms, we are optimistic when looking at the months ahead, and we expect a steady recovery as travel restrictions to and from our key markets continue to loosen. I will now walk you through the key figures for the year 2021. Moving to slide three, we continue to closely monitor global demand for, and accessibility of travel and are seizing every opportunity we see. This has helped result in a positive EBITDA of EUR 745 million for the year 2021, a sharp increase compared to last year. For passenger activity in 2021, Air France-KLM was able to operate up to 72% of our 2019 capacity and at a 71% load factor, with the first half of 2021 more impacted by travel restrictions.
Short- and medium-haul, African and Caribbean routes were the best performers. Compared to 2020, the number of flights in 2021 increased by almost 25%, and the number of passengers carried increased by more than 30%. For Transavia, recovery showed a steeper curve as the capacity is close to pre-crisis levels with a load factor of nearly 75%. During the second half of the year, we observed a particularly strong recovery of leisure traffic captured by the development of the domestic network for Transavia France, which resulted in an overall increase of more than 50% ASKs compared to 2020, with an increase of passengers carried of approximately 70%. The strong cargo performance realized in 2020 continued throughout 2021, outperforming previous years. The full contribution of cargo in 2021 tripled versus 2019.
At Engineering and Maintenance, 2021 proved to be challenging as the external revenues in 2021 were down by 18% compared to 2020. This was due to our customers continuing to consume green time on their engines and to a lesser extent, the reduction in the use of their equipment as part of their mitigation of COVID-19. Despite this, the operating result of our maintenance activity was positive in the fourth quarter and full year 2021. COI margin reached 3.1%, a sharp increase compared to 2020, where it was at -19%. Moving to page four. We accelerated and continued to execute our transformation plan, positioning us in line with our mid-2020s financial targets. Steven and I will have the chance to give you more details on our transformation efforts later in the presentation. Moving on to fleet.
In 2021, we continued to take major steps toward the renewal of our fleet to allow more efficient operations and support our sustainability goals. We closed a landmark deal with Airbus for the firm order of 100 next generation A320neo family aircraft for our medium haul fleets at KLM and Transavia with 60 additional purchase rights. This historic deal will allow us to sustain our medium haul activity throughout the airlines of our group while leveraging the full power of our scale. We also signed a letter of intent for the purchase of four Airbus A350 full freighter aircraft for Air France. In addition, further simplification was achieved with the phase out of our CRJ700 at Air France HOP with the phase out of our CRJ1000 aircraft in the first half of 2022.
With that, the Air France HOP fleet will then consist of only Embraer 190s and 170s, resulting in one single cockpit type. Besides efficiency, fleet renewal is a major lever to achieve true sustainability. In 2021, we committed to reaching net zero CO2 emissions in 2050, and we committed to SBTi and its framework, which will ensure a transparent evaluation of our sustainability achievements in line with the Paris Agreement on global warming. In 2021, our first airline solicited ESG rating emphasized that through our clear commitment and sustainability strategy, we are adequately prepared to manage risks over the year, near term and medium term. In 2021, we also launched our sustainable aviation fuel corporate program to accompany our customers in their decarbonization effort.
So far, 70 accounts have already signed up. Last but not least, in 2021, we have also worked on maintaining a high level of customer service, excellent onboard sanitary measures, and a new customer range of products and services. In 2021, our NPS scores at both KLM and at Air France have been consistently high. Air France was named best airline in Europe at the Skytrax World Airline Awards, and KLM recently received the 2022 APEX World Class Award. Turning now to page five of the presentation. A word on corporate travel. Corporate revenue in 2021 is still low compared to 2019, but it showed a steady growing trend throughout the year. See this now on the right side of the slide.
At the end of the year, our long-haul flights, we reached 50% of our 2019 revenues versus a low point in Q1. Moving now to slide six. You can see key metrics for the fourth quarter of last year. This quarter marked a turning point for Air France-KLM. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, we reached a positive EUR 200 million quarterly result, a better performance than in Q4 2019. This performance is a result of an increased level of agility and flexibility in managing our business, the continued execution of our transformation plan, and the benefits of the Dutch NOW and Activité Partielle unemployment programs. During Q4 2021, and compared to the same period in 2020, Air France-KLM carried 167% more passengers for a unit revenue increase of 87%.
Our load factor averaged 71.5%, an increase of almost 30% compared to Q4 2020. This positive momentum on our passenger activity was coupled with a solid performance in our cargo business, which posted another strong quarter with yields continuously on an upward trend sustained by high demand. Cargo revenues reached EUR 1 billion for Q4, with a higher unit revenue than Q4 2020. Continued strong demand is expected in Q1 2022, with global trade booming and sea freight facing bottlenecks. A word on cash and debt. The first set of recapitalization measures initiated last spring have reduced our net debt by 26% compared to the end of 2020, and our cash at hand remains at a sufficient level of EUR 10.2 billion.
I would now like to hand it over to our CFO, Steven Zaat, to provide further details on our financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Ben. Good morning, everybody. As you can imagine, I'm pretty happy with the results which we are going to present. When we were at the end of October, we were looking actually at our guidance, and we thought that we'd be slightly positive EBITDA for the full year, and we end actually with EUR 745 million for the full year. It was even better than we expected at the end of October. In November, of course, we saw that Omicron was getting there, let's say we get quite nervous. But what we see is actually that the performance on the long haul was getting stronger and stronger. We were increasing capacity, we were increasing our load factor, and that is driving our results.
For the first time, we are doing better than we did in 2019. Q4 to this year is better than in 2019 for Air France and for KLM. Pretty strong results. Strong in cash. We are still above EUR 10 billion in cash, which is actually we paid back EUR 500 million of the state loan at the Air France side. That is a very positive news. We were for the third time in a row cash positive. Let me guide you on page eight to the development in our network. As you can see, despite Omicron, which kicked in, let's say more or less in November, we were able to increase our capacity and increase our load factor. We reached a level of 72%, which is in the guidance.
Despite that we had Omicron, and we guided before Omicron, we were still in the guidance of 70%-75%. At the same time, the load factor increased. That means that we are actually, the money machine is starting to run, and we have even higher yields than we had in 2019. It is especially strong on the long haul. On the long haul, we end, at the end of the day, with a capacity of 75% and a load factor of 75%. We see that the load factor in the business class and in the economy class is actually the same in the fourth quarter. On the long haul, very strong results, especially when the U.S. was opening, we saw actually flights which were fully booked. I can repeat myself again, if people can fly, people will fly.
Despite the fact that there was a lot of restrictions in place related to the Omicron, on the long haul, we saw still a big demand. On the medium haul, it was a bit different. There you see actually that there was an impact of the Omicron. You see a slight decrease in terms of load factor. We kept in the same kind of capacity of 80%, but here you see that the lockdown measures in Europe significantly hit us. There was very strong lockdown measures in the Netherlands, and you see that actually the load factor gap is increasing in December.
Still, you see October and November, we were actually hitting closer to the levels which we had in 2019. Then on the French domestic, it is a little bit the same picture. We are planning, of course, on a lower capacity than we had. It's part of our transformation at Air France. The lockdown, especially, with all the offices closed, that didn't help us so much on the French domestic. We had a little bit of pause here during the Omicron. As we see now that actually all the, let's say the constraints in traveling are disappearing more and more, we expect that it is picking up quicker, but we see that there's at least a two months delay probably in terms of corporate traffic.
If you go to page nine, you see that we kept more or less the same capacity in Q3, which is quite high because usually Q3 is actually our peak season. We kept, let's say, approximately the same level. Of course, we are still far away from the levels of 2019. We are 28% lower. We had 75 million ASKs in Q3 for 2019. The same is true for our revenues, getting closer to the levels where the crisis started. We started at Q1 with EUR 5 billion. We are now at EUR 4.8 billion. Still, if you compare to Q4 2019, it's EUR 6.6 billion. Still, it's a doubling of revenues versus one year ago, and coming back, we get closer to the pre-pandemic levels.
The very positive news, because the fact that we have a decrease in revenues, we were able also to decrease the cost at the same level. Currently, actually, we have an EBITDA which is close to 2019 Q4 2019 levels. It's the best quarter of the year, despite Omicron, despite lower corporate travels, and the fact that our headquarters are still closed. It did not impact us in terms of profitability. We are much better than I guided you at the end of October. It is not that we were very conservative at that moment, but we see that the appetite to travel is bigger than we expected with or without Omicron. If you go to page 10, the revenues I just explained, there is of course the big question on the fuel.
The fuel cost went up with EUR 431 million. This was mainly driven by capacity that has an impact of more than EUR 300 million. The higher fuel price kicked in. That is around EUR 500 million. It was partly compensated by very effective hedges, which was around $150 million. At the same time, last year we had negative hedges in the results, so also for EUR 120 million. If you take the total hedge year-over-year, it's almost EUR 300 million in terms of results. We see also that the efficiency of our aircraft are kicking in. That reduced our fuel bill with more than EUR 100 million. We get to the operating results.
For the first time, and this is our main KPI where we're focusing on, we are at EUR 178 million, which is EUR 100 million better than in Q4 2019. Now, this is a big surprise for me, and I suppose it's a big surprise also for you. The strong cost measures reduced our cost even more than we expected, and at the same time, even the revenue increased compared to our expectations in the last quarter, despite the fact that there was Omicron. Then last, but I will come back on that later, we had for the third time in a row a positive cash flow in this quarter.
If you take a look on page 11 and you see our unit cost, you see that the unit cost actually is down with -1.2%, and that with a capacity decrease of 26%. If you take a deeper dive, especially on the staff cost, you see actually that the costs are getting down with 27%. We had still the state aid in. The state aid has a positive impact of EUR 160 million. If you look at the staff costs, excluding the state aid, you see that we are already at -20%. The fruits of the transformations are really getting in, both at Air France and both at KLM.
I come back later on the result of both airlines, but you see a strong increase of results of Air France getting closer to the margins of KLM. If you go to page 12, you see the results per network. Now, I explained to you already that we have a strong result on the passenger side. That created actually a positive result for our network business. Cargo is very strong and stronger than ever. We have currently EUR 400 million additional revenues than we had in Q4 2019. Despite the fact that we increase our capacity with the bellies, you see still that we are able to increase the unit revenue.
We are actually benefiting from the logistics situation around the world, and you see that there is still a big demand for the cargo. Going to Transavia. Transavia was not profitable, but it is usually a very difficult quarter because it's the winter season. On top of it, of course, as I discussed, there were all kinds of Omicron measures in Europe, so that of course impacts also the Transavia results. Then we had the closure of the Morocco borders. Despite that, we kept the capacity close to the 2019 levels. We had a load factor of 80%. If I look at all the other low-cost competitors in terms of results, I think the loss is pretty low compared to our competitors over there.
On the maintenance side, we have actually two pictures. I would say it's still difficult to get the external revenues in, mainly coming from the shop visits. Actually everybody is saving on their engine shop visits. Of course that results in a lower revenue. On the engine side, by the way, 80% is variable cost. If you don't have the revenues, we also don't have the cost. You see that despite this drop in revenues, we are still able to make a profit of EUR 69 million and an operating margin already of 9%. The maintenance business is getting back on track and we expect at a certain moment that all these shop visits will fall when, let's say, all airlines are starting to fly again. All in all, very happy with the operating results.
I'm very happy, even if I look at the three domains where we have an excellent performance in this quarter. If we then go to the airlines, let's start with KLM. KLM quickly implemented their restructuring, and you see already that by putting this restructuring in place, they have already a decent margin of 6%, and despite the fact that we have still much lower revenues than we had in 2019. For Air France, we know that it took time to get all the, let's say, transformation in. You see now that we get all the transformation actions in, into our results, and which resulted actually that Air France is currently already EUR 70 million better than they were in 2019, where KLM is more or less at the same level.
The gap, the performance gap, which we saw increasing actually during the crisis, is actually close now, and we are getting closer in terms of results. Very good results, very promising on the cost side. Still, as you know, there's a lot of capacity which we can still put in place where we have the transformation actions in place. If we then go to the full year, and this is actually a very interesting picture, there you see there's a big difference in the first half year versus the second half year. The first half year we lost EUR 1.9 billion that we cannot recover in the second half year because we are not yet back on track because we still don't have the full capacity in.
You see that we already have a result of more than EUR 300 million in the two quarters. You see that KLM is already at the margin of 7.5% in this quarter. If you look at Air France coming back, they are now at an operating margin of 0%. You saw the results in the Q4 where we actually the performance gap between the two are getting closer to each other. Very promising results at both airlines. I really want to thank, as Ben already did, all the staff, because we saw all these colleagues leaving, but all the work is still to be done. We work day and night to receive these results. Thank you very much for bringing these results in.
If we go to page 15, you see the cash flow. As I said, for the third quarter in a row, it's positive. It's not driven by working capital so much. It's more driven by our EBITDA and our operational results. EUR 600 million coming from our operational results. The change in working capital is not coming from selling more tickets. Actually, the selling and the burning of the tickets were almost the same. I think we had the benefit of EUR 60 million of it. It's more that if you grow capacity, you have a growth in accounts payable, which is beneficial for your working capital. Still you see a very low CapEx still in. We had delays of fleet at the KLM side on the 787-10.
Still you see we keep the CapEx levels close to the 2020 levels despite the fact that we are renewing our fleet. All in all, very happy that we showed for the third quarter in a row a positive cash flow in the quarter. If we then go to page 16, there we have the full year actually for the net debt. Of course, due to the very tough Q1 especially, where we lost actually cash, you see that we are regaining cash in the three quarters after. All in all we lost EUR 600 million in terms of cash.
If you look at the net debt, we start to reduce it, especially coming from the capital strengthening measures which we had in April, and we ended the year at the level of EUR 0.2 billion in terms of net debt. We reduce it by almost EUR 3 billion in this year. We come, of course, and we all know it, we need to strengthen our balance sheet. We are working on that again day and night. As you know, we did the first transaction in April, and actually we strengthened there already the balance sheet and reduced actually our equity gap.
We are preparing for all kinds of instruments, so we are looking when we are going to announce a preemptive right for the shareholders to see exactly, we have to look at the market conditions to find the right spot. We have all our quasi-equity instruments, let's say, prepared, so it can be a convertible perpetual bond, or it can be a hybrid convertible bond. We are also looking at it to refinance assets in a way to create equity, and that is for an amount of around EUR 500 million. In total, we have, let's say, all kinds of tools in place which can reach up to EUR 4 billion in terms of equity, but we are still looking for the right moment.
Our reference shareholders are supportive of these equity strengthening measures. We have big discussions if they participate or not, so I cannot, as the capital increase is not fully announced, say who is going to participate and not, but we are very positive and they all support currently actually our actions. We will come back to you when we are ready. Of course, again, I want to stress it again, it is our intention to pay the states back as soon as possible. We know that it is a strategic constraint on our company, so, let's say we have all the scenarios ready to get quick in repaying the state aid to the states.
If we have done all these equity measures which we have in mind, we reach a net debt EBITDA level of 2%-2.5%. It depends a bit on how much state aid we are going to pay back. If we pay back state aid, that has a negative impact on the net debt. Of course, that is a trading balance for us to what level we go and to get, let's say, actually rid of the measures which we have from the European framework. All in all, we are prepared. We are sitting ready, but we have to find the right moment to do something. If we then go for the outlook, we keep on ramping up our capacity.
We are expecting a level of 73%-78% in the first quarter this year, despite the fact that we know that there's limited corporate travel due to the fact that all the headquarters are not open yet. They start to reopen at the moment. We see that especially on the long haul, we're getting close to 80% of our capacity. Long haul doing very strong, supported of course by the cargo. As I already said, there is a lot of demand where people, if they can fly, they are flying. You see that already in January, we have a load factor of 77%, so close to the 80%, despite the fact that again, there are all kinds of measures still in.
These measures are going to be lifted actually what we see now every day. That we see that also in our bookings. The bookings are very strong since actually last week, and that gives us actually let's say a comfort that we can keep these capacity levels in. Up to now, we never disappointed you with let's say the production to have in. On the medium haul, you see still that it is closer to let's say the levels of 80%, and there we adjust continuously looking at the flight contribution of a flight to keep the capacity in or not. Again, as bookings are starting to grow, also on the medium haul segment, we are having a comfortable feeling by these capacity levels.
The French domestic, that is very much also the Q1 is especially a let's say a market that is dependent on corporate travel, because at the end of the day, in Q1, there not a lot of people are going on holidays. You see that we are adjusting there the capacities to this 50% level. That's also the aim. It's never the aim to get back there on these levels. The French domestic is a market that which has a very late booking curve. They book late just for the travel. It's very difficult to say where we will end, let's say for instance, in March.
On page 20, you see we still have a cash level of more than EUR 10 billion, despite the fact that we paid back EUR 500 million in terms of the PGE on the French side. So a strong cash position still at the beginning of the year, which is of course comfortable. If you look at the first quarter, actually you'll see that we will be around break even in the current international context. Of course, if there is going to be a war in Russia and Ukraine, the situation will be different. But with the current international context, we are comfortable with an EBITDA around break even. We keep, let's say, the lower CapEx levels as compared to 2019. So it's EUR 2.5 billion of 80% related to fleet.
Strong cash position, and still we expect, let's say, from an operational cash flow perspective, that Q1 will be not a big cash burn quarter. On the page 21, and there you get to the $1 billion question. Where will we end with our fuel? I think there are two scenarios, and I think everybody knows it. If there will be a war, that will be a tremendous pressure on the fuel price. If, let's say, the situation is appeased in the Ukraine, then you will see immediately big drop. We have quite significant hedges already in for Q1 and Q2, 72% for Q1 and 63% for Q2.
We are ramping that up, for Q2, we will go to levels of 70% at the end of this quarter. We go to 55% at the third quarter, and at 40% at the fourth quarter, at the end of this quarter. We have already a positive hedge result in our portfolio of $470 million. In Q4 you see we had a big contribution also from this hedge, around $150 million, which was already mentioned. I think the hedge positions are quite safe. We also put in some out of the money put options if the oil price will drop significantly to benefit from that part.
If we go to page 22, and here I think, you know, we started this crisis, and we started to announce big transformation plans. Actually, you see the further we go, the further we see that all these cost savings are getting in, because Q4 was also very positive due to the fact that we had lower costs than we expected. KLM, as already stated, doing it quickly, and they're still at EUR 800 million compared to 2019, with a reduction of 17%. On the Air France side, we are now at EUR 1 billion, we will ramp that up till to EUR 1.4 billion at the end of 2022. They are currently already at -16% in FTE.
We see that we are getting balanced in terms of FTE reduction and on Air France side, there is still more to come. If you look at the state support, we have two months in 2020 in Q4 2021 for the NOW, and for the entire Q1, we have the NOW in place. On Air France, as you know, there's nothing changing. The long-term partial Activité Partielle, as they call it here, is in place until the end of this year. Even if there's, let's say a more severe situation, we can make use of this Activité Partielle and this NOW system. Coming back on the unit cost. As already stated, very happy on the cost development in Q4.
You see that we have actually now measures in place which also keep their at the moment we will grow capacity. We expect a unit cost reduction of -4% to -6%. We should not forget there's a lot of price inflation, so that is calculating in. We have a lot of transformation projects which actually continues to bear fruit, plus the fuel efficiency coming from the fleet. Later we will give you the guidance on our transformation program. As we say, all the measures we took, and I was there as CFO of Air France, they are there to stay. For instance, if you look at the headquarters reductions we did here at Air France. Of course, if we ramp up activity, we will not increase these staff.
We have a reduction of 12% in FTEs, excluding the Transavia France growth, which is very substantial for the years to go. If you look at the -4% to -6%, Air France is more at the upper side of it, so it's even above the -6%. KLM, as they had already competitive unit costs in place, the unit cost level is more closer below the -4%. On the CapEx. If we look at the CapEx, we will not come back to the levels of 2019. As already guided, we have EUR 2.5 billion in 2022. We are aiming at a level of around EUR 3 billion, which is at approximately the level of our depreciation and amortizations.
We reduce it significantly compared to the EUR 4 billion we guided during the investor day. You see that we are continuing to renewing our fleet with 50% of operating leases for the coming years. We are still reducing with this 50% our operational lease cash out. On the reduced capital expenditures program for the years to come to support our free cash flow. Coming back then on the guidance for the midterm. We still expect that the capacity will be back to 2019 levels in 2024. That's maybe on the pessimistic side, maybe it will be 2023. Who knows? If you see the appetite, you could expect a scenario where we are earlier back on the capacities of 2019.
We have a program in place, which is actually all secured in all kinds of actions, which brings us down to unit cost levels to 4%-6% at a constant fuel price. When the capacity is back at the 2019 levels, we keep the operating margin in our plans between 7%-8% in 2024. We repeat that. On the cash side, we will have an adjusted operating free cash flow expected to be positive in 2023, excluding exceptionals. We still have to pay the cargo claim. If you pay the cargo claim, of course, that has an impact on our free cash flow in 2023, but we don't know what year we are going to pay that.
The same is for, let's say, repaying back, let's say the deferrals of the social charges to the states. We keep on the guidance on the net debt, so it is circa EUR 3 if you just look at our operational performance. But after the recapitalization, we get back to 2%-2.5% levels, depending on the size of the second step of the recapitalization and depending also on how fast we will pay back both states. I hand over now for the strategic highlights to our CEO, Ben Smith.
Thank you, Steven. As you can tell by Steven's positive tone, I think we're all very pleased to tell you how gratifying it is to finally start to see a smile coming from our group CFO. Turning to page 27, our focus on our key strategic pillars that we put in place in 2019 has been maintained throughout the crisis. These have formed the foundation of our plans as we move forward. I'd like to take a few minutes to discuss two of these pillars. First, sustainability. Climate change is undoubtedly the greatest challenge our industry faces today. Sustainability is a key component in all our strategies, our ultimate commitment being net zero by 2050.
To meet these objectives, we have several key tangible targets, including a commitment to reduce our CO2 emissions by 50% network wide by 2030, and by 50% in the French domestic market, the most strict condition in Europe. Currently, our main decarbonization levers are fleet renewal and the use of sustainable aviation fuel. We are continuing our fleet renewal trajectory, and our fleet will include almost 50% next generation aircraft by 2025. These next generation aircraft all provide at least 15% and up to 30% reduction of CO2 emissions compared to current generation aircraft.
In addition, the next generation airplanes will provide a significant improvement in noise emissions. Furthermore, we'll increase our SAF blending to reach 2% in 2025, leveraging the success of our corporate offers and B2B offers with systematic SAF contribution and ticket pricing as a baseline. Our SAF blending will continue to grow in the following years. In the meantime, we are pursuing all other levers at our disposal, such as ground equipment, electrification, eco-piloting, and carbon offset mechanisms. Moving on to page 29. Our transformation delivered EUR 1.8 billion of savings end of 2021 compared to 2019, and we will be delivering stronger results in the years to come. The acceleration and expansion of our transformation programs will allow us to achieve more than EUR 4 billion of structural savings by the end of 2026. Moving now to page 30.
I'll give you a few details on the content. Major items include the restructuring of our French domestic network, the streamlining of our organization with the reduction of 12% of total FTEs in a context of social stability, and fleet renewal and simplification. Our transformation is well underway, and we are confident in our ability to achieve the guided 7%-8% operating margin by 2024. Slide 31. In conclusion, we achieved significant milestones in 2021. We've ramped up capacity and load factors are on a sharp increase across the network. Our cargo activity continued to outperform and MRO activity is back to positive operating results. We continued our restructuring efforts, resulting in substantial structural benefits. Our airlines are recognized as airlines of choice.
As we look forward, we will continue to follow our strategic plan, our compass, at a steady pace while constantly adapting to our customers. We will continue to execute a historic transformation across our group to ensure future competitiveness leadership. We will continue to strengthen our sustainable commitments and execute environmental impact improvement. Now let's take it, just pass it back over to the moderator, and we can take your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you find your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We will take the first question from Alex Irving from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I hope all is well. My first question is on RASK into the recovery. Can you give me some details on CASK? Do you have a view on where this is likely to go, please, and the levers that you have to support this? Specifically, anything facilitated by, say, NDC and the view of the different benefits from areas enabled by this. Second question is on sustainable aviation fuels. Saw the news recently that you're imposing a surcharge for this. Can you please talk a little bit about your expectations for the pricing logic? Are customers actually paying more, or are you having to take down base fares to get the booking curve the way you want that to be?
Third, and finally, if I may, can you please talk about the willingness of business passengers to travel, what evidence you're currently seeing and how they're behaving relative to leisure passengers on short, medium, and long haul? Thank you.
Okay, let's come back. On the CASK, I give you all the guidance. On the RASK, yes, we see a bigger NDC revenues. We see that actually the RASK actually is overperforming than what we expected. Of course, we are still looking at RASK always compared to 2019, so we still have, let's say, a negative impact in terms of load factor on our RASK. If you look at the yield, we see that the yield is actually up in Q4 for the total network. The yield is up by 7.4%, also driven partly by NDC revenues.
You see a lot of baggage coming in, and indeed the NDC doesn't impact. I don't know how you want to see that, positive or negative, but it's not a significant impact on that one. We put in place a surcharge for the sustainable aviation fuel, and we see that it's actually sticking. Actually we can keep increasing. Actually, we could increase our fares due to the fact that we have higher fuel costs. That is in, and it's not meant to be reduced for the coming period. Also note, of course, if you look at the trend in terms of the fuel cost. On business traffic, I think I already said it.
In Q4, on the long haul, we had in the business class actually in the same load factor as we had on the economy. Of course, there is less corporate traffic, so we know that, but we see that it's filled up actually by leisure passengers who will take a business seat at the moment they can fly.
Yeah. One or two words there. Just to Steven's last point on the business class and La Première load factors. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of high-end leisure tickets sold in the premium cabins. This has started just prior to the summer when Europe opened up to American visitors. We were very pleased to see the uptake, and that has continued right through to today. Many of the premium heavy airplanes that we had on Asia have now been switched. We're now operating those on routes to the United States, and forward bookings are showing that phenomenon is continuing. On the CASK side, can't underestimate the benefits of shifting operations from our regional operator hub to Transavia.
We're almost finished that transformation. As you're aware, hub was and still is one of the highest CASK operations in Europe today. Transferring the bulk of that activity out of Paris-Orly to Transavia has a significant improvement in our CASK. Moving those aircraft to other European routes has been a big help. That's driving an improvement in CASK. Throughout 2020 and just continuing a little bit into 2021, we still have the impact of the removal of the 747 at KLM, A380s, A340s at Air France. There continues to be a densification in many of the fleets that we have.
Great. Thank you very much.
We will now take the next question from James Hollins from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah. Good morning. A couple from me. The first one is on the bookings pricing outlook, as you'd expect. Starting with transatlantic and the obsession in the market I'll stick with, are we looking at Air France capacity up quite significantly against 2019 in Q2 and Q3 on transatlantic? That's what my data's showing. Just wonder if I could sense check that. The U.S. airlines and the results season, largely talking about bookings and pricing on transatlantic looking better than 2019 at this. Good comment on, I know it's early stage, Easter and obviously summer bookings. The second question, if it is a second one, just wondering if you could run through kind of the impact and trajectory of moving both KLM and Transavia from Boeing to Airbus operators.
Is it kind of bad to begin with and then, you know, as you have mixed fleet and then sort of good much longer term? Maybe just sort of your thoughts would be very welcome. Thank you.
James, on the Transatlantic, if you take a snapshot of all Transatlantic capacity that's currently being sold in the marketplace for the summer period, you can see it's still below what was in place in 2019, summer 2019. Obviously there are airlines such as American Airlines that have removed a big portion of their wide-body fleet permanently, so difficult to reinstate. I think they pulled out all their 767s and their A330s. We know British Airways has removed their entire fleet of 747s. There is obviously Norwegian that has pulled out of the Transatlantic. We're not quite sure this new airline will be up and running. We see a decrease in activity coming out of Italy.
We have put out for sale levels of 2019 on many of the transatlantic routes, and in some cases actually an increase. We're quite confident and optimistic that if the rules that are currently where we're currently sitting today, where there's very few restrictions for Europeans to enter the United States and vice versa, that we should see the benefits of pent-up demand. We saw this in Europe last summer, particularly in the countries on the Mediterranean basin. As I said, we're quite optimistic that we should see something similar in the summer of this year.
I'll pass it over to Pieter for the transition impact on moving from 737 that platform to the A320neo and what we're expecting at KLM.
Thank you, Ben. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On the question of the transition, I think it's first fair to say that the decision on the fleet has been a very important one for the group and for the airlines in the group. The first aircraft are expected to come in by the end of 2023, early 2024. That means that we still have some time for the preparation and the overall timeframe for the introduction is gonna be a couple of years. We are not the first airline going through a transition like this, so we get the support and we have some learnings from other airlines. This will take place in the timeframe, roughly 2024 up to 2030.
I think we do have the opportunity by having both Transavia Netherlands and KLM operating out of Schiphol Airport to optimize this influx of new aircraft and to make sure that we do it in an optimal way going forward. We are not concerned about that on the short term. We do have plans in addressing this transition. Again, we're not the first airline doing that in that timeframe, 2024-2030.
Thanks, Pieter. I think you're sticking around for a while, but sorry to see you again.
Thank you. That's very kind of you.
We will now take the next question from Jarrod Castle from UBS.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, three questions. Firstly, just in terms of, you know, the potential balance sheet fix, you say you can scale it up to about EUR 4 billion. At the moment, you know, at the group level, you've got negative shareholders' equity of EUR 3.8 billion. Can you just give an update where actually the Air France negative equity is, and just how you kind of got to up to EUR 4 billion, please, if there's anything you can say on that?
Just secondly, you know, I understand you can't say anything in terms of, you know, given the uncertainties in terms of what the capacity will be this year per se, but, you know, assuming China and Japan don't come back, could you give an idea of where capacity could land for this year or indeed where capacity could land for summertime, please? Then just lastly, on cargo and passenger. I mean, how can you give a rough idea in terms of the split of profitability between the two businesses? You know, do you think cargo over the medium term now is structurally a better business? Thanks a lot.
Let's first start on the balance sheet. Indeed, as you say, the equity is -EUR 3.8 billion, of which EUR 3.8 billion is at the Air France side. I cannot give you the split of the EUR 4 billion because we have all the tools ready. I cannot give you any details on that side at the moment. On the profitability of cargo, we have, let's say, a system. In the past we reported separately on cargo profitability, but then we had a difficulty on the transfer price of the belly. As stated, we have much more revenues now, and actually we look at the contribution we get from this cargo activity.
It's EUR 400 million then in Q4 2019. Your question, if it's there to stay. Of course there will be an impact if all the belly capacity gets back into the market. We see a stickiness in terms of demand also because the shipping is not yet there, and it's not expected to be totally solved in the coming year and maybe not even in the coming two years. We expect an increase of the revenues per ATK, or not an increase versus today, but versus the 2019 levels.
As you see, if in all the reports you read from consultants and analysts, everybody expects that the cargo market will be stronger than it was in 2019, which is positive news for us because I have to repeat again, the backbone of our results is in the long haul and on which we have a big cargo capacity. On the capacity side, you ?
Okay. On the capacity, we've got, as you may have noticed over the last two years, we've been demonstrating an enormous amount of agility and flexibility in how we deploy our airplanes, moving them from areas that are closed off to areas where there's opportunity. We're expecting to be doing the same thing for the remainder of this year. What I can tell you is Q3, we are ramping up to ensure all of our aircraft are operational. We're actually hiring pilots. We're training pilots to ensure we have the resources necessary if demand is there, and we have the necessary support, jobs also being filled, such as maintenance.
What I can tell you is, if I look at 2019, so 2021 or 2022, so Q3 2022 versus 2019, we are in a position to fly the majority of that capacity, should the demand be there. With Asia, we're expecting that Asia to be to be relatively closed. No big change where we sit today. That's our assumption. We do have very strong opportunities in the United States. As we forecast today, the French overseas markets, which are very, very big, out of France. Africa has been very resilient for us. South America is coming back quite quickly.
There are regions in the world, the bulk of our regions in the world still are showing strength for the Q3 and then hopefully going in through the rest of the year. Thanks.
Thanks very much.
We'll now take the next question from Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank.
Morning, gentlemen. Just one from me. More a strategic question. The press would have us believe that you want to accelerate repaying your pandemic state aid packages, because some of the limitations around those loans are preventing you from strategic moves, and obviously the one that's caught the attention is the situation with ITA in Italy. Ben, I don't know if you could talk a bit about that. You know, how important is it to the group to be able to participate in those types of situations? Assuming it takes a while still to pay back the state loans, is there anything you can do to sort of defend your position in those situations, perhaps involving some of your alliance partners? Thanks.
We know Italy has a in terms of consolidation or taking a risk on having a greater position is not new to the airlines in our group. We've had two attempts taking an equity position in the former Alitalia. Both have not been successful. To do it a third time when and if we have the flexibility to do so will be under you know much more risk comfortable zone. When we look at the Italian market one of the most important or lucrative assets that we have limitations in accessing is the Milan Linate Airport. We managed to secure additional slots at no cost over the last year.
We're hopeful that, you know, in the near future, additional slots will become available at Milan Linate through either remedies or through the reduction in activity by the new or the evolved Alitalia. That's really key for us. That helps. When you look at the rest of what interests us in Italy, it's something that continues to be strategically important, but I wouldn't say it's number one on our list, and I wouldn't say that it is something that we lose sleep over if we can't participate. Of course, we look at it very closely with our partners.
We have other means of participating in the consolidation, which may not involve a direct investment on our part. As I said, we do have many partners that can help us, not only airline partners, but also other strategic partners, if we feel that it could marginalize our operations. As I said, we're looking at it very closely, but the number one advantage for us that we always saw in Italy is the Milan Linate Airport.
Got it. Thanks, Ben.
We will now take the next question from Ruxandra Haradau-Döser from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes. Good morning and congratulations on the strong Q4 performance. Three questions, please. First, could you please give some indication on what you expect on the main non-fuel cost lines this year, personnel costs, airport and navigation charges, MRO costs, and what is the requirement for CO2 certificates this year? Second, looking at your EBIT margin target for 2024, what general cost inflation trend have you considered in your planning and is what you are currently seeing in the market in line with your planning? Third, according to Fit for 55, as it is on the table today, environmental costs will start to kick in particularly as of 2025. How should we think about your 2024 EBIT margin target once you start to account for additional environmental costs? Thank you very much.
Thank you for the question. I think on page 30, we explain quite well in which areas you see our cost reductions. It is a big chunk is related to the labor cost. We will continue also on the external spend and we have still the fleet fuel efficiency. It's pretty clear on page 24 where we explain it exactly. There is of course an increase of, let's say, all the environmental costs. We have the benefit that if you look at the ETS rights, we are actually covered for the full year this year, which we already, let's say, have them in place. We even for almost 75% are hedged for the next year.
There is coming in these costs, but of course, these costs will also drive, at the end of the day, that the revenues are going up because there should be a level playing field. We should have all the same kind of these costs. As we are renewing the fleet, we are reducing at the end also these costs. Then on the navigation charges and the airport charges where you're referring to, that's all included in these numbers. We expect already that it is going up, but we have so much transformation plans in place that we actually offset those with other cost measures.
On just a quick note on Fit for 55, you know, there's full support at Air France-KLM. However, level playing field when it comes to rules, regulations, or taxes and charges that are attached to Fit for 55 are extremely important for us, and this we're waiting for a clarification around that.
Thank you.
We will now take the next question from Sathish Sivakumar from Citi.
Good morning, and thanks for the presentation. I got three. First on cargo, what is your current visibility on demand? Sorry, I'm just getting an echo here. How does it actually compare with 2019 levels? Because you gave a nice presentation slide on passenger network, slide 19. If you could actually give similar color on cargo, that'll be helpful. The second one, related to the staff cost, when do you expect actually the full state support to unwind in 2022? Then the third one, in terms of the pricing, if you could actually give some color on how the premium segment has actually performed versus the economy class leisure segment in Q4. Because in Q4, you're seeing a sequential improvement in pricing compared to Q3, again, benchmarking versus 2019 levels.
Any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Just our apologies. The line coming out from is extremely poor, so we're just gonna try to decode what it is that you said here. Just give us 30 seconds.
Sorry. Should I go again or?
Let's first start on the cargo capacity. Of course, the cargo capacity on the belly side is fully linked to our long haul. 80% of our cargo capacity is coming from the belly. You can actually see where we guide you through for the first quarter. The same will be for the cargo side on our. Let's take, if you take a multiple of 80% of that one. Then, of course, it depends a lot also what will happen in the opening of China and the opening of Japan, because those are very strong cargo markets. Of course, if they, those are also coming in, we have additional capacity also there in the market.
For the full freighter, we fly them wherever we can at the moment, and we even sometimes takes advantage with the, let's say, passenger aircraft to fly cargo. We are fully capable to fly the capacity for the cargo as we can. Of course, as we increase capacity on the passenger side, there is less available in that side for the cargo, but we get the belly capacity back. You could take the reference especially on the long haul for that one.
What has been the booking window or what is the visibility now?
The booking window for cargo is always very short. You have never bookings in already today for the summer. It is two weeks, two to three weeks. Very short booking period, but that's just normal. That is not specifically to today, that is always the cargo market.
Got it. Thanks.
We will now take the next.
Sorry, no. Is it clear?
It's clear. Thank you. I got two more.
Okay. Yeah, can you repeat those two questions because we had a very bad line here?
Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Staff costs. When do you expect the full state support to unwind?
The partial activity, it is actually on our slides. On the Air France side, it will be there till the end of 2022. For KLM, it's still in place for Q1 2022, but it can always be extended later. For the moment, we have it in place, let's say, at least till Q1 2022.
Okay. Thank you. The third one is around the pricing versus, say, on the premium segment. Obviously, if you look at Q4, you're seeing a sequential improvement in Q3 when you compare versus 2019 pricing levels. I'm just curious to understand here, how does the premium segment perform versus the economy segment?
I have that for you. If you look at the economy pricing, it was, if you compare it in Q4 versus 2019, it was up with 12%, so very strong. Even in the business class, we only have a drop of -1.9% in yield. There is a gap, but it's not very big, and we are very close, even for the business to the 2019 level.
We will now take our next question from Andrew Lobbenberg from HSBC.
Morning, guys. Hope I'm not too echoey. I wanted to ask about the state aid review process, you know, and the EU Competition Authority reviews. I don't know what you're gonna be able to say, but I mean, I thought that previously there was a debate going on as to what slot remedies might be required of KLM in return for restructuring of the Dutch state loans. Can you say has that process gone away? Is that settled and is ready to be announced when you announce the transaction? Yeah, just what's going on with that, please?
In terms of the unit costs, you're showing us a drop of 4%-6% in unit costs when you've got the capacity full up and running, targeting 24 at the moment. I think that's a bit less than what you had originally at the Investor Day, which I think was restated post the pandemic. Is this just a reflection of the greater inflation that we're facing, or have I got my wires crossed? Wouldn't be the first time.
Maybe we can just start by saying, could everybody who's not talking, please, put your lines on mute, 'cause we have a really bad echo that's coming here.
Let's start on the state aid. We are in a current discussion still with the state. I cannot say anything at this moment. We are in discussion with the Dutch state and with KLM and Air France-KLM all together, and we are still in the discussions going on in the coming period. That is for that part. I cannot say anything on slots or anything on any other part. On the unit cost, I think if you talk about the unit cost, we actually, if you look at our own models, we were actually at the same levels, even better than we guided before. But in the guidance, at a certain moment, we included also the fuel cost.
There was not an adjustment for the, let's say the fuel price. In the guidance we gave, there was a part which was related to this fuel price. I don't know the percentage anymore, but I think it was close to 3%-4%. Actually you see that we are more or less in the same range, even a bit better than we had before Andrew.
Okay. What you're saying is.
Really clarifying your first question there. There is nothing new to report on from the Dutch state when it comes to any change in loans or anything that we have from a financial perspective from there. We are still, as Steven said, in discussions both on the KLM level and the Air France-KLM level with the Dutch state. Just to be super clear on that, there's nothing new to report today.
Can I just stay on that Dutch thing, ask another question? You may be able to answer it, may not. I think Steven said that you were ready to go with the balance sheet restructuring and awaiting market conditions. That's what I thought I understood. Does that mean that would be able to launch the balance sheet restructuring even before the Dutch state talks had concluded? Maybe you can't answer it. I don't know.
Answer that, at the moment.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks.
We will now take the next question from Neil Glynn from Credit Suisse.
Good morning, everybody. Again, hopefully limited echo. So good. So far, so good. Two questions please, if I can. First of all, just on competition from the various hubs around Europe as you look forward to the summer. I'm interested in whether you can see at this point or whether you have any expectations on competition for transfer traffic, on which all of the network carriers long haul businesses are obviously somewhat dependent. Do you expect more competition if the transatlantic is really the only place to go on long haul this summer, for example? Then the second question on Transavia. I appreciate fourth quarter 2021 isn't really to be extrapolated into the third quarter 2022, but the performance was actually quite close to fourth quarter 2019.
I'm very interested to think how feasible might it be to recover third quarter 2019 margins this summer, particularly given that Transavia is clearly growing as a proportion of the business. Or is that just far too early to think about? Thank you.
Let me in coordination answer the one on the transfer traffic. What we have seen, and you've seen it back in the results, that in fact, being a network carrier, we had the opportunity to get a lot of connecting traffic, which had no alternatives in traveling. If you see both the passenger numbers as well as the operational results, we can really see that having such a network and having such a transfer opportunity for travelers has really been an asset throughout the pandemic crisis. We can even see that some of the, if I may call it thinner, long haul routes are very well supported by strong hubs.
While if you add then the fact that the combination of the HOP at Air France at CDG and the HOP of KLM at Amsterdam is a great combination, we have really demonstrated, and again, I think the fourth quarter results are a testament to that, the model whereby the two hubs are supplementing each other. We do have the transfer traffic going over these two hubs, and we do have the strength of the respective networks. I think it's very strong. That's precisely why, and let me allude here on the KLM side, we have reinstated basically our network. Whereas we are on only roughly 70% of the capacity, we're back to basically 100% of the destinations which we had, prior to COVID.
The power and the strength of that network, the power and the strength of the hubs and the combination of the two hubs, I think is really putting us at a very strong foot and position vis-à-vis some of our competitors.
Maybe to complete on Air France side. What we've seen throughout this crisis is that we were able to fly more capacities on our competitors when we compared to Lufthansa or IAG. And each flight, of course, is profitable compared to the variable costs. This is due to the fact that, as Ben said, Africa is very resilient. The Caribbean and Outre-mer network is very resilient. We see South America coming back also. And in November and December, as of the reopening of the U.S., we saw a tremendous growth in the booking for North Atlantic. On Transavia, what we can say and you know that we're growing Transavia France. We came from a fleet of 40 aircraft and we're aiming to fly 61 aircraft this summer. The demand for the European network is very strong.
You must keep in mind that 12% of the capacity of Transavia is now on the domestic market, that it is replacing very loss-making operations in Air France. It really strengthens the global result of Air France and Air France-KLM on the whole.
Great. Thank you very much.
We will now take our next question from Sumit Mehrotra from Société Générale.
Thank you. A difficult question was already asked by Andrew. I'll switch to an easy one. Adjusted free cash flow. I noticed you still keep the expectations of break-even or positive for 2023, but Q1 is going to be the third consecutive quarter where you will expect a positive adjusted free cash flow. Hearing what we're hearing from your transatlantic capacities and yields, and a strong summer ahead, I'm wondering why you are still not very positive going for positive or even a break-even kind of operating free cash flow target for 2022. Well, I'll push my luck. Air France negative equity is EUR 3.8 billion, which is basically the entire equity of the group.
In that context, can you share your insights about whether the Dutch government would like to come back to parity in terms of voting rights for the group? Anything you could comment would be great. Thank you.
The first question, yeah. If you talk about cash, it's, let's say we don't give a guidance yet on EBITDA because I think the context is still uncertain. We don't know when China is coming back, when Japan is coming back, so it is very difficult also to guide you at this moment. We don't have a guidance on EBITDA to guide you on the cash side. You could say indeed three times in a row, you should be fully convinced now. Let's say we are still have this uncertainty above us. You see also not a lot of our competitors actually guiding on those kind of things because the climate is still too uncertain. On the Dutch, let's say, discussions with the Dutch state.
As we said, we are in discussions and that's at this moment all we can say.
Thank you.
As there are no further questions, I would like to hand the call back over to your host for any additional or closing remarks.
Yes, I would, this is Steven Zaat speaking. I would like to make an additional remark. Olivier Gall, our Head of Investor Relations, will leave our beautiful group. I want to thank especially Olivier because his professionalism and if you see the quality of the report, and I know that you analysts always are very supportive in all the work he is doing. So I would like to thank now Olivier Gall for leaving us. I cannot say anything more at the moment about it, but what I can tell you is that we have a successor in place. He will start on the first of April, at the same moment that Olivier will leave, which is Frédéric Gagey, who is currently leading our Flying Blue.
He's the director of our Flying Blue program, and I'm very happy that we have such a professional back in our team. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.