Abstract
Today, AIRFRANCE-KLM is the largest airline company in the world in terms of total operating revenues and passenger-kilometers. The company's CEO is, since January 1st 2009, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon. With a turnover coming close to 24 billion Euros as on 31st March 2009 and having taken over 74 million passengers that business year, Air France-KLM is one of the world's biggest air transport leaders.
However, the airline industry's world is an extremely competitive market and between low coast companies that keep decreasing their prices and increasing the number of destinations and the rise of the Kerosene price, the competition is harder than ever. More precarious than this, is another competitor rising in the European market for medium-haul flights: the High Speed Trains. Indeed, train ticket prices are getting lower and high-speed train rail routes are becoming more numerous all over Europe. Moreover, at the time of global warming, it appears that the air travel growth contributes significantly to climate change: the world's 16,000 commercial aircrafts generate more than 600 million tons of carbon dioxide per year which is nearly as much CO2 as that from all human activities in Africa in a year; we can't say the same for high speed trains, and people are sensitive to this kind of information which makes the competition even more tough.
Representing the head of the Marketing Department of Air France-KLM, we are going to conduct a study to become more competitive in front of the high speed train competition: TGV, THALIS, EUROSTAR, ICE and others. We will first present the group AIRFRANCE-KLM, then look into its global figures and market opportunities, after that we will perform a Porter and a SWOT analysis. Starting from that, we will draw up comparisons, possible product improvements and alternative solutions. Finally, we will conclude with our recommendations to the board.
