From 1990 to 1997 AF lost 21.6 billion francs. The return to profit without loosing staff etc seems a bit of a miracle to me. But then I'm not a French accountant. KLM/BA merge was oposed on the grounds that the combined airline would be too big. So how big is the af/KLM combo? I know that the merged airline is very successful but looking at other airlines profits they must have stashed an awful lot of cash under the matress to be able to buy another airline a few years after returning to profit in 97.