Air Austral acquires a stake in Air Madagascar and confirms its ambitions

Air Austral and Air Madagascar signed a new strategic partnership agreement on 9 October. This marks the entry of the Reunion-based airline into the capital of the Madagascan carrier. The Malagasy State remains the majority shareholder (51%), and will appoint the Chairman of the Board of Directors, while Air Austral acquires 49% of the company and will propose the Chief Executive Officer. Initiated in 2016, this process confirms Air Austral's growing power and its new ambitions.

" We are more focused on strengthening our offer in a context of extreme competition in the Indian Ocean. "explains Jean-Marc Grazzini, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing at Air Austral.

Réunion's turnaround over the last five years has produced excellent results. " We are making money for the fourth year running, with net income of €6.2 million in 2016. We have completely renewed our on-board product with the launch of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and opened new routes, all in barely a year. "he says.

The news non-stop service between Mayotte and Paris is a great success. " We have a load factor of 93% to 94% and are increasing to five weekly frequencies. "says Jean-Marc Grazzini. The Réunion-Johannesbourg route is also doing very well, while connections to Asia are more difficult. " The Réunion-Bangkok route is working extremely well, with load factors of over 80%, but we are still in a learning phase with our new non-stop flights to Chennai (Madras) and to Guangzhou, in partnership with Air Madagascar. In fact, we need to work on strengthening Réunion's appeal in the Indian and Chinese markets, which have very different cultures. Our strengthened partnership with the Réunion tourist office will help us ".

On mainland France, Jean-Marc Grazzini believes that the excellence of the Air Austral product in all classes remains the airline's best competitive advantage. " We offer a level of comfort unmatched by other carriers and a wide choice of frequencies. This October we are launching two weekly non-stop frequencies on Marseille-St Denis de la Réunion by Boeing 777-300 with three classes of service ".