He was often described within the aviation industry as a big mouth.
Often wearing his XL Airways cap perched on his head, he spoke frankly and fought to establish, in France, other French airlines beyond the giant Air France – KLM.
XL Airways’ collapse in 2019 moved Laurent Magnin somewhat away from the microphones and spotlight. He still has things to say about air transport and now wishes to share his experience with the world of tour operation, offering advice and showing how to handle difficult situations through the MAG-M2C PARTNERS structure.
On the occasion of the traditional lunch for aviation decision-makers organized by APG, TourMaG handed him the microphone.
Often wearing his XL Airways cap perched on his head, he spoke frankly and fought to establish, in France, other French airlines beyond the giant Air France – KLM.
XL Airways’ collapse in 2019 moved Laurent Magnin somewhat away from the microphones and spotlight. He still has things to say about air transport and now wishes to share his experience with the world of tour operation, offering advice and showing how to handle difficult situations through the MAG-M2C PARTNERS structure.
On the occasion of the traditional lunch for aviation decision-makers organized by APG, TourMaG handed him the microphone.
The French pavilion after the XL Airways episode.
TourMaG – In 2019 XL Airways, a French leisure carrier, disappeared. Since then air transport has reorganized, the void left has been filled; what is your view of the French pavilion?
Laurent Magnin: The void is always filled. AOM/Air Lib disappeared in early 2000. A fleet of 30 aircraft and what happened? Air France and Corsair immediately responded in capacity. Air Caraïbes arrived and Air Austral increased its presence. XL Airways was replaced, as others before it were…
The peculiarity of XL Airways was that it did not depend on DOM connectivity unlike other French long-haul carriers. My team was in tremendous energy, with two or three new routes opened per year during 14 years of my presidency. An air bridge with French tour operators to the Dominican Republic, 14 flights per week, the Maldives, Mexico, Cuba…
And then, anticipating the decline of charter flights by TOs, the major strategic move to focus on regular service with the USA. The five major cities opened in three years, magical, even Las Vegas! Phuket and China would follow. And knowing the DOM routes well from my Corsair past, I note that Air Caraïbes and Corsair are codeshare in the Antilles, so I tell myself that with Air France there are only two carriers, right? So we go in 2012.
My dear competitors announced my bankruptcy filing for that year with our fares. Well, it took seven years to see that, and in the meantime, my friends in the Caribbean and Réunion benefited for years from XL’s competitive pressure.
TourMaG – A beautiful trajectory, but crushed by the liquidation in 2019…
Laurent Magnin: A true human tragedy; the worst part is not going every morning toward a shared energy in a wonderful profession. In the role I play, guiding executives. I tell myself that this failure serves me greatly. They tell me so as well. The adage that you learn more from failure than from success, I strongly believe in it.
Having been in a position of failure also means being able to tell the people you coach, “I don’t want you to go through what I went through—standing on a chair in the courtroom before the 700 employees of your company and telling them, ‘here, we’ve lost our jobs’.”
TourMaG – We discussed it; can we say that French Bee filled the XL Airways void?
Laurent Magnin : Completely and without a doubt, French Bee has its rightful place. And I would even go further: it is indispensable in the landscape. Furthermore, like Corsair in the past, you need large aircraft to offer low-seat prices without losing money; the rest is rhetoric. The Airbus A350-1000 is a perfect aircraft.
The Dubreuils are the best shareholders in French aviation over the last two decades. The predecessor is Jacques Maillot with Nouvelles Frontières and Corsair. Courageous people with their own money. I deeply respect that. People who were not helped or barely helped, in a French aviation environment that does not understand the pressure of global aviation competition.
Jean-Paul Dubreuil looked at the XL Airways file before launching French Bee. There were extremely thorough discussions. An XL Airways that could have become the low-cost arm of the groupe Dubreuil. That did not happen, such is life. Jean-Paul Dubreuil is tough and I hate having a boss…(laughs).
More seriously, the file was difficult with the unbelievable issues of XL’s ownership. I would modestly say that I think the XL file probably inspired Jean-Paul Dubreuil and Marc Rochet for French Bee. Good for French aviation.
TourMaG – In France, there is this particular situation: a giant, the Air France – KLM group, and beside it the “little airlines”?
Laurent Magnin : The Air France giant makes sense; what is illogical is the size of the French airlines. We are in the world’s leading inbound country! The French fleet should be doubled, at least in the medium-haul. We missed the low-cost turning point, and I can’t imagine where we would be if we hadn’t had Transavia…
TourMaG – Those airlines have nevertheless progressed well and managed to reinvent themselves, such as La Compagnie, which you led.
Laurent Magnin : La Compagnie is different. We are in the ultra-niche, but it’s a beautiful and real niche. President for three years (at the time, Laurent Magnin was president of La Compagnie and XL Airways), I resigned “live” before my employees at the Bobigny commercial court in 2019. I wasn’t asked to do it. But it was unbearable for me to imagine my team, XL Airways, 700 employees, would lose their jobs and that I would remain president of La Compagnie!!
La Compagnie was created before my arrival. It was in an absolutely dramatic state.
Two Boeing 757s, entirely in business, kept breaking down every two weeks, one in London and the other in Paris. Very heavy losses. Yes, we worked to turn it around with Christian Vernet. We ordered brand-new 321neo aircraft. Christian ensures a strong continuation and La Compagnie is doing well.
TourMaG – You also went through Corsair*
Laurent Magnin : I didn’t go there as an employee!!! I joined at 22 in 1981, not declared for six months, and I took home my first paycheck on April 1, 1982!! With a Corsican family, it was CORSE-AIR then Nouvelles Frontières and Jacques Maillot, the encounter of my life. I joined when there were 30 of us, and I left when there were 2,000 employees. A wild story, one of the finest in French private aviation. The airline changed and it’s no longer the same era.
TourMaG – With, however, a different product.
Laurent Magnin : Yes, Pascal de Izaguirre took the gamble of upgrading the product, as Henri Giscard d’Estaing with Club Med ultimately did! An airline that is 40 years old cannot compete on costs like a new one. I always think that upgrading the product also aims to align with costs; not illogical in strategy.
But one must never forget that a portion of people does not travel with the upscale product. It’s factual: if it implies higher fares, they cannot afford it. Hence the need to have a plurality of offerings, especially with the DOM which absolutely needs fares as low as possible.
TourMaG – On this leisure market you know well, how do you see the evolution of Transavia?
Laurent Magnin : A quick point before answering. The Air France group, with Anne Rigail and Nathalie Stubler, has done real work in re-integrating XL’s cabin crew. I want to thank them for that. Moreover, I mainly use Transavia when I travel, and my family does too. Transavia was indispensable to the Air France Group, a late decision, because Air France didn’t believe in low cost for a long time and our colleagues at SNPL were against it. I’m not even talking about the union control over fleet size and the huge error of banning Transavia from establishing bases in Europe, which ALL major low-cost carriers did. That isn’t an error by Air France’s management.
Laurent Magnin: The void is always filled. AOM/Air Lib disappeared in early 2000. A fleet of 30 aircraft and what happened? Air France and Corsair immediately responded in capacity. Air Caraïbes arrived and Air Austral increased its presence. XL Airways was replaced, as others before it were…
The peculiarity of XL Airways was that it did not depend on DOM connectivity unlike other French long-haul carriers. My team was in tremendous energy, with two or three new routes opened per year during 14 years of my presidency. An air bridge with French tour operators to the Dominican Republic, 14 flights per week, the Maldives, Mexico, Cuba…
And then, anticipating the decline of charter flights by TOs, the major strategic move to focus on regular service with the USA. The five major cities opened in three years, magical, even Las Vegas! Phuket and China would follow. And knowing the DOM routes well from my Corsair past, I note that Air Caraïbes and Corsair are codeshare in the Antilles, so I tell myself that with Air France there are only two carriers, right? So we go in 2012.
My dear competitors announced my bankruptcy filing for that year with our fares. Well, it took seven years to see that, and in the meantime, my friends in the Caribbean and Réunion benefited for years from XL’s competitive pressure.
TourMaG – A beautiful trajectory, but crushed by the liquidation in 2019…
Laurent Magnin: A true human tragedy; the worst part is not going every morning toward a shared energy in a wonderful profession. In the role I play, guiding executives. I tell myself that this failure serves me greatly. They tell me so as well. The adage that you learn more from failure than from success, I strongly believe in it.
Having been in a position of failure also means being able to tell the people you coach, “I don’t want you to go through what I went through—standing on a chair in the courtroom before the 700 employees of your company and telling them, ‘here, we’ve lost our jobs’.”
TourMaG – We discussed it; can we say that French Bee filled the XL Airways void?
Laurent Magnin : Completely and without a doubt, French Bee has its rightful place. And I would even go further: it is indispensable in the landscape. Furthermore, like Corsair in the past, you need large aircraft to offer low-seat prices without losing money; the rest is rhetoric. The Airbus A350-1000 is a perfect aircraft.
The Dubreuils are the best shareholders in French aviation over the last two decades. The predecessor is Jacques Maillot with Nouvelles Frontières and Corsair. Courageous people with their own money. I deeply respect that. People who were not helped or barely helped, in a French aviation environment that does not understand the pressure of global aviation competition.
Jean-Paul Dubreuil looked at the XL Airways file before launching French Bee. There were extremely thorough discussions. An XL Airways that could have become the low-cost arm of the groupe Dubreuil. That did not happen, such is life. Jean-Paul Dubreuil is tough and I hate having a boss…(laughs).
More seriously, the file was difficult with the unbelievable issues of XL’s ownership. I would modestly say that I think the XL file probably inspired Jean-Paul Dubreuil and Marc Rochet for French Bee. Good for French aviation.
TourMaG – In France, there is this particular situation: a giant, the Air France – KLM group, and beside it the “little airlines”?
Laurent Magnin : The Air France giant makes sense; what is illogical is the size of the French airlines. We are in the world’s leading inbound country! The French fleet should be doubled, at least in the medium-haul. We missed the low-cost turning point, and I can’t imagine where we would be if we hadn’t had Transavia…
TourMaG – Those airlines have nevertheless progressed well and managed to reinvent themselves, such as La Compagnie, which you led.
Laurent Magnin : La Compagnie is different. We are in the ultra-niche, but it’s a beautiful and real niche. President for three years (at the time, Laurent Magnin was president of La Compagnie and XL Airways), I resigned “live” before my employees at the Bobigny commercial court in 2019. I wasn’t asked to do it. But it was unbearable for me to imagine my team, XL Airways, 700 employees, would lose their jobs and that I would remain president of La Compagnie!!
La Compagnie was created before my arrival. It was in an absolutely dramatic state.
Two Boeing 757s, entirely in business, kept breaking down every two weeks, one in London and the other in Paris. Very heavy losses. Yes, we worked to turn it around with Christian Vernet. We ordered brand-new 321neo aircraft. Christian ensures a strong continuation and La Compagnie is doing well.
TourMaG – You also went through Corsair*
Laurent Magnin : I didn’t go there as an employee!!! I joined at 22 in 1981, not declared for six months, and I took home my first paycheck on April 1, 1982!! With a Corsican family, it was CORSE-AIR then Nouvelles Frontières and Jacques Maillot, the encounter of my life. I joined when there were 30 of us, and I left when there were 2,000 employees. A wild story, one of the finest in French private aviation. The airline changed and it’s no longer the same era.
TourMaG – With, however, a different product.
Laurent Magnin : Yes, Pascal de Izaguirre took the gamble of upgrading the product, as Henri Giscard d’Estaing with Club Med ultimately did! An airline that is 40 years old cannot compete on costs like a new one. I always think that upgrading the product also aims to align with costs; not illogical in strategy.
But one must never forget that a portion of people does not travel with the upscale product. It’s factual: if it implies higher fares, they cannot afford it. Hence the need to have a plurality of offerings, especially with the DOM which absolutely needs fares as low as possible.
TourMaG – On this leisure market you know well, how do you see the evolution of Transavia?
Laurent Magnin : A quick point before answering. The Air France group, with Anne Rigail and Nathalie Stubler, has done real work in re-integrating XL’s cabin crew. I want to thank them for that. Moreover, I mainly use Transavia when I travel, and my family does too. Transavia was indispensable to the Air France Group, a late decision, because Air France didn’t believe in low cost for a long time and our colleagues at SNPL were against it. I’m not even talking about the union control over fleet size and the huge error of banning Transavia from establishing bases in Europe, which ALL major low-cost carriers did. That isn’t an error by Air France’s management.
Transavia remains in a challenging economic stance on a market largely occupied by Ryanair, EasyJet and all those carriers with fleets of 400/500 aircraft. But the tool is indispensable. What French policymakers largely fail to understand is that the moment a company stops serving France, it takes five minutes to react, whereas a French-based carrier does not do that. Currently Ryanair is shutting down provincial airports under the pretext of taxes (the perpetual French obsession).
Airports that bust themselves to host the airline and that made it money. French policymakers must acknowledge this. French airlines are a major, indispensable, strategic tool. And instead of funding them when they’re struggling, it would be better to help them perform well upstream!!!
The failure of the aviation transport summit
TourMaG – Let’s address taxation, the taxes. Perhaps the outspoken figure you are will have his say?
Laurent Magnin : I served as vice-president of the FNAM and president of the SCARA, a fascinating job at the heart of French aviation concerns. In 2018, we organized the “aviation transport summits” under Elisabeth Borne’s oversight.
We worked like crazy on what truly mattered to us and which has always weakened French air transport. Fifteen days later, not one or six months after, Elisabeth Borne announced a new tax on aviation.
We felt like we were suffocating. Some say I have a big mouth, perhaps, but I really lost it. I appeared on the 8 o’clock news saying I was now certain that our politicians did not understand our problems and that we had held summits for nothing.
Laurent Magnin : I served as vice-president of the FNAM and president of the SCARA, a fascinating job at the heart of French aviation concerns. In 2018, we organized the “aviation transport summits” under Elisabeth Borne’s oversight.
We worked like crazy on what truly mattered to us and which has always weakened French air transport. Fifteen days later, not one or six months after, Elisabeth Borne announced a new tax on aviation.
We felt like we were suffocating. Some say I have a big mouth, perhaps, but I really lost it. I appeared on the 8 o’clock news saying I was now certain that our politicians did not understand our problems and that we had held summits for nothing.
The French pavilion needs plurality
TourMaG – Yet Air France has managed to recover and return to profitability. What is your view on this, Air France’s strategy, its upscale move?
Laurent Magnin : Interesting, Ben Smith, since he is not French but Canadian, I sense a freer tone regarding state decisions. I recall a former Air France CEO saying: « If I complain about a tax decided by the state at 2 pm, I’ll get a call at 4 pm from Bercy reminding me by whom I was appointed. »
Ben Smith openly criticizes taxes and certain decisions that weaken Air France. On the upmarket front, he is right. On a worldwide scale, a carrier like Air France can only offer one of the best products. Other airlines perform the cheaper work. But for the French pavilion to thrive against what it faces, there must be a plurality of products, offerings and frequencies. It is indispensable.
Laurent Magnin : Interesting, Ben Smith, since he is not French but Canadian, I sense a freer tone regarding state decisions. I recall a former Air France CEO saying: « If I complain about a tax decided by the state at 2 pm, I’ll get a call at 4 pm from Bercy reminding me by whom I was appointed. »
Ben Smith openly criticizes taxes and certain decisions that weaken Air France. On the upmarket front, he is right. On a worldwide scale, a carrier like Air France can only offer one of the best products. Other airlines perform the cheaper work. But for the French pavilion to thrive against what it faces, there must be a plurality of products, offerings and frequencies. It is indispensable.
A very strong link with Tour Operators
TourMaG – Let’s discuss your current advisory activity, especially with tour operators, with your recent SETO membership. What do you intend to do?
Laurent Magnin : I have a very strong bond with tour operators. As Commercial Director of Corsair or CEO of XL over a total of 45 years, I’ve worked closely with them. I have devoted myself to their transport plans, listening to them, supporting their development ambitions, and addressing their problems as well.
I want to help them with crisis management because the topic has never been as topical, unfortunately… And I was President of Héliades for 14 years with 100,000 clients per year! So I know this métier deeply. I even worked as a counter agent for two years in the late 70s… !!
TourMaG – What will you concretely do with SETO?
Laurent Magnin : My objective for crisis management is to share the keys to those in aviation. To provide a service that benefits all SETO participants. We are in contact with Patrice Caradec (President of SETO) who truly reflects the human dimension of this tourism profession.
We must be ready for crises, with each player in their company organized, and in common on major problems. What I often notice is the ability of some of us to abandon common sense when an event hits us.
Conduct a thorough assessment of your crisis-management status. Do you have a crisis manual? Do you have trained people? Have you run internal crisis tests and simulations with your teams? All of this, yes, I believe, makes a lot of sense. Tour operators are brothers and sisters, whom I want to see as safe as possible in case of trouble. And it pleases insurers when companies are well prepared on the subject…
Laurent Magnin : I have a very strong bond with tour operators. As Commercial Director of Corsair or CEO of XL over a total of 45 years, I’ve worked closely with them. I have devoted myself to their transport plans, listening to them, supporting their development ambitions, and addressing their problems as well.
I want to help them with crisis management because the topic has never been as topical, unfortunately… And I was President of Héliades for 14 years with 100,000 clients per year! So I know this métier deeply. I even worked as a counter agent for two years in the late 70s… !!
TourMaG – What will you concretely do with SETO?
Laurent Magnin : My objective for crisis management is to share the keys to those in aviation. To provide a service that benefits all SETO participants. We are in contact with Patrice Caradec (President of SETO) who truly reflects the human dimension of this tourism profession.
We must be ready for crises, with each player in their company organized, and in common on major problems. What I often notice is the ability of some of us to abandon common sense when an event hits us.
Conduct a thorough assessment of your crisis-management status. Do you have a crisis manual? Do you have trained people? Have you run internal crisis tests and simulations with your teams? All of this, yes, I believe, makes a lot of sense. Tour operators are brothers and sisters, whom I want to see as safe as possible in case of trouble. And it pleases insurers when companies are well prepared on the subject…
