Dutch Government Buys Stake In Air France-KLM To “Protect Dutch Interests”

While I don't disagree with the arguments, the evidence you're all using is suspect. Continually stating that KLM currently make more profit isn't really relevant to their goal. Air France has a bigger potential profit, and companies look to the future - not always the past.

The Dutch governments responsibility is to the Dutch people and not to make Ben Smith's life easy. It's clear that Ben sees KLM and the Dutch market as a lower prioriry and clearly seems to have a poor understanding of the situation.

Totally agree with majik above. Also Chandan Bhat makes some great points too. In my view KLM would be better off without AF - AF is a basket case and it is laughable he is trying to make it a "premium carrier". Neither are industry leaders, but KLM at least has fantastic staff, a great hub and a good consistent product particularly in short-haul. I also understand Ben/Lucky admires Ben Smith, but do think this isn't nearly critical enough at the same time he is human and AF is frankly a nightmare - but I do think he is completely failed from the get go of uniting these two carriers and has actually alienated the only part of his business that makes money and is successful. Frankly I think AF/KLM as an entity is not rescuable - I don't think you could find a more ill matched pair of airlines culturally. Demerger would be the best outcome. I actually miss the days when KLM tried to be a global carrier like we see with Turkish, Emirates or Qatar and I do think they out of all the Western European carriers are the one that have the best shot at this if they ever do return to this goal...

I have to join the other commenters here and question just why this article is still talking about what a “smart guy” Ben Smith is and what wonderful things he is doing/trying to do for AF-KLM.... we don’t have enough information to evaluate that at all yet, and we certainly don’t know what his intentions are eg saying he is just “wanting closer cooperation between the airlines”. From the limited evidence so far since he has been in charge, he has managed to increase the labour costs at AF quite substantially, while utterly alienating the management and employees of the Dutch side of the corporation, which has been carrying the group financially for years. This does not scream “success” to me, although as I have said it’s too early to make final judgements. In addition, this statement that Smith “probably wasn’t quite anticipating the extent to which this would become a national issue” is frankly a bit absurd; the man was brought in to take over the holding corporation of two national carriers. If he was unaware that “robbing Peter to pay Paul” in this situation would create a problematic political issue with one side then he was not fit to take the job. I enjoy your coverage of this interesting topic Lucky but please try and make it a bit more balanced.

It’s time for Delta to pony up some serious cash to take a major stake in KLM. Northwest/KLM were seriously joined at the hip before the NW/DL merger and that partnership reaped huge benefits for both carriers. AF will never be as important to Skyteam as KLM. AF doesn’t have the hub, the management, or frankly the will of the employees to pull it off. They are too focused on being “French” at the expense of running the business. Yes, KL is very “Dutch” but unlike AF they are also pragmatists. Something the French are not. There are many former NW upper management people now at DL who remember well the synergies created by the NW/KL partnership. It’s time for DL to take another look at that and protect what they have.