PARIS — Air France canceled roughly half of its flights on Monday, upending the travel plans of tens of thousands of passengers and warning that disruptions were likely to worsen on Tuesday after a strike by the airline's pilots.
The airline, part of the French-Dutch group Air France-KLM, said it expected to cancel around 60 percent of flights on Tuesday amid a dispute with French pilots over the group's plans to shift a large part of its European operations to a low-cost subsidiary where most crew members would be paid less and be based in other European countries. Pilots' unions have threatened to extend the strike through Friday.
Alexandre de Juniac, the chief executive of Air France-KLM, expressed frustration over the lack of progress in talks with the pilots and warned that a long dispute threatened to derail the airline's tentative recovery and risked damaging the Air France brand.
"Air France should be profitable this year if this strike does not impact its progress," Mr. de Juniac said.
He added that the airline was anticipating losses of 10 million euros to 15 million euros, or about $13 million to $19.5 million, for each day of the pilots' walkout.
Air France-KLM, Europe's third-largest carrier by number of passengers, after Ryanair and Lufthansa, announced plans last week to double the size of Transavia, its budget airline, by 2017. Transavia's fleet would increase to more than 100 planes from about 50 now, with a goal of carrying 20 million passengers a year. The move is aimed at building the unit into a leading player on intra-European routes, better able to compete with rivals like Ryanair and EasyJet, which have a lower cost base.
Jean-Louis Barber, president of the Air France branch of France's main pilots' union, the Syndicat National des Pilotes de Ligne, said in a French radio interview that the pilots were not opposed to the new investments that the group planned for Transavia. But he said the union was opposed to what he described as the "outsourcing" of pilot jobs to lower-wage countries in Europe.
Air France said that about 65,000 passengers faced cancellations or delays Monday and that it had already alerted tens of thousands more of the possibility of further disruptions later in the week. As of Monday afternoon, the airline said it had sent out more than 600,000 email and text messages to passengers with tickets through Sept. 22, inviting them to postpone their travel.
According to the airline, roughly 60 percent of its 3,800 French pilots were expected to take part in the walkout, although union leaders have put the figure at closer to 75 percent.
Despite the large number of cancellations, airport officials said there was little chaos in the concourses of Paris's two main airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, as most passengers who would have boarded Air France flights remained at home or in their hotel rooms.
Hélène Ballabriga, a 73-year-old doctor, said she felt like a "hostage" when she and her grandson arrived at Orly early Monday morning from Guadeloupe to find that she would need to wait several hours for a connecting flight to Biarritz, in southwestern France.
"They warned us yesterday about the cancellation, but they didn't put us on another flight," Dr. Ballabriga said. "It's really irritating because I only have five days of holidays."
The strategic shift by Air France-KLM comes as most of the region's full-service airlines are scrambling to reduce operating costs while fighting a two-front battle against budget carriers on European routes and fast-growing Middle Eastern rivals on lucrative long-distance services.
Lufthansa, Germany's largest airline, recently made a similar move, transferring many of its European or short-distance flights to two low-cost subsidiaries. Workers at those affiliates are paid less than their peers at Lufthansa, and many are on temporary contracts.
Pilots at Lufthansa's Frankfurt hub have also planned an eight-hour walkout on Tuesday, the latest in a series of strikes by the carrier's flight crews over the past three weeks. Pilots there are protesting reductions to early-retirement benefits.
The cuts are part of a three-year restructuring drive at Lufthansa aimed at eliminating €1.5 billion in costs by the end of next year.
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