Air France has today confirmed that it will shut down its subsidiary airline ‘Joon’, and merge it into the mainline.
Joon was founded by the French flag-carrier in December 2017, in an attempt to cut costs and reach a wider variety of customers. In November last year, Le Figaro reported that Air France’ new CEO Benjamin Smith is unhappy with the Joon and plans to discontinue the brand, to focus on Air France instead and not split up the group in too many different brands.
Air France has now confirmed these reports and described its future plans for Joon in a statement:
The market set for Joon were mostly leisure flights, to destinations including Cape Town and Barcelona. Many criticised the carrier for its marketing strategy, which was a desperate attempt to attract ‘millennials’ and other customer groups that are not very present on Air France. All flights operated by Joon, as well as its around 600 employees will be taken over by Air France when “the project is completed”.
Joon currently operates 13 Airbus A320 family airplanes and four A340-300 long haul aircraft.
Jakob Wert is an aviation journalist from Germany. He built up the website IFN.news and is the Editor-In-Chief of International Flight Network.
