Air France KLM has released a summary of a new three year transformation plan to the end of 2014 to achieve profitability.

It talks about making its employees work harder, keeping capacity to a growth of not more than 5%, better using its fleet, and cutting debt by measures not yet enunciated, other than by reducing capital expenditure in the target period.

What it doesn’t mention is the dead obvious if it is going to restore it dismal image, which is to stop killing its passengers.

Air France dropped all 228 people on board one of its A330-200s to their deaths in the mid-Atlantic in the crash of AF447 on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on 1 June 2009.

The nose of the jet was manually set and retained by the crew at an absurdly high angle all the way to it striking the ocean, with all of its systems functioning perfectly (the ice clogged pitots having cleared) while a set of aural stall warnings in the cockpit were ignored, and the three pilots on board failed to diagnose a failure to correctly fly the aircraft in circumstances that had been encountered and professionally dealt with by the crews of at least 11 other A330s in otherwise similar circumstances also studied by the accident inquiry.

There is something totally obscene about the management of an airline talking about business recovery plans that exclude any reference to a massive, and avoidable loss of passenger lives because of dismal flight standards for which they are individually responsible in French law, as they would be under Australian law.

Nothing other than an unequivocal acceptance of that responsibility, and a detailed and well funded reconstruction of Air France flight standards is acceptable. Everything else is hogwash.