France has no plans for now to sell its 14% stake in Air France KLM, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday, pressing the group's new chief executive to focus on increasing competitiveness.

Le Maire was reacting to a warning from the group's new Canadian boss, Benjamin Smith, to Air France's labour unions that the government was prepared to offload its shares and they should not rely on the state to bail them out.

Smith, who took over the group last week, faces the unenviable task of having to overcome union resistance to reduce the French unit's swollen cost base while keeping increasingly frustrated Dutch staff on side.

A wave of strikes at Air France this spring cost the group some €350 million and led to the ouster of Smith's predecessor.

"Today the priority is to turn around Air France," Le Maire told franceinfo. "Selling off the state's stake in Air France is not part of Benjamin Smith's action plan. It is not an option on the table today."

Shares in Air France KLM rose 1.6%, although the stock remains down by nearly 40% so far in 2018.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.