FlyBoy737800, AF has been "partially privatized", a term we were not allowed to use at Reuters, because we would get a phone call from the Elysée Palace ("French white house", so to speak) every time we did. So we were stuck with "opening up of share capital".
Last I remember the French Government had an 18.6% stake and employees, another 14.1%. As with any other listed corporation, you can only access the folks who bought into the IPO. What the actual stakes are, after offstage resales and transfers are, um, nobody really knows except the Board, which only has a reasonable approximation.
For details of institutional holdings:
AFLYY: AIR FRANCE KLM Institutional Ownership.
And if you really want me to lawyer the point, actually, Air France ceased to exist since the merger with domestic carrier Air Inter. Already a private airline thriving under protectionist policies prior to EU open skies policy, the legal engineering figured that the easiest way to merge the two was for Air Inter to gobble up Air France and then the merged unit could exploit the "Air France" trademark as if it had been the other way round.
But true, FlyBoy737800, AF is a symbol of French national prestige and you really oughta an "e" to "boxes" of the black sort before asserting they will never be found. My outsider's guess is that money may cap the search and that the actual findings may never be released, but both AF and Airbus Industrie really do want to know what happened. Unlike vacuum cleaners and hair dryers that electrocute individual consumers, airliners are just "too big to fail" and if Airbus products get too bad a reputation, the company will fail eventually.
Personally, I think Boeing needs strong competition, so I'm happy about Airbus and about Chinese initiatives to work towards a longhaul aircraft, but that is another issue.
(Con-Pilot may dispute this as some irrelevant posting of mine elsewhere seems to have cost me all credibility in his eyes, but hey folks! Check it like you check anything else anybody raps on about. Happy skies!)