Casablanca-based Royal Air Maroc is restructuring its operation in an attempt to capture some post-COVID aviation uplift and optimize the airline's recent entry into the oneworld alliance. CEO Hamid Addou says the changes will put Royal Air Maroc back onto a growth path.

Royal Air Maroc restructures to better face future challenges

The airline is eyeing a new customer-centric focus based on optimizing the customer experience, advancing digitization, furthering sustainability, and developing a culture of eco-responsibility.

Royal Air Maroc will restructure itself into five broad business units. In addition to the existing operations and support business units, the restructured airline will now include commercial, customer experience, and transformation business units.

 "Royal Air Maroc is reinventing itself, and we are more than ever mobilized, in this period of recovery, to face the major challenges that await the company in the coming years," said Mr Addou in a statement.

"To this end, we have completely refocused the company's strategy on the customer experience, controlled from end to end but also rethought the employee's experience for a human capital that is better prepared and integrated into its environment."

The restructure was announced on Monday during an employee town hall-style meeting. Royal Air Maroc says the restructuring is necessary to get the airline back on track after COVID-19 and to manage the many internal and external challenges facing the airline.

New commercial, customer experience, and transformation business units at Royal Air Maroc

The commercial business unit will oversee a raft of sub-departments, including dedicated market-specific departments to better meet the requirements of the airline's various markets. Also falling under the new commercial umbrella are cargo, network and revenue management, alliances and partnerships, support and sales, communications, and trade marketing.

The new customer experience business unit will house two departments - customer experience and customer proximity. Royal Air Maroc says it wants to get to know its customers better. It sees this new business unit as the way to do that.

The transformation business unit will drive the restructuring process. Royal Air Maroc says this new unit will be responsible for permanently supporting the airline's adaptation to changes in consumer trends, behavior, and new technologies.

Under the transformation umbrella will be the strategy and innovation, digital and IT, marketing, e-Commerce, and sustainable development departments.

The current operations business unit will remain largely intact. That encompasses air operations, technical, quality safety and security, training and human resources departments. The current support business unit will bring together the finance, management control and shareholdings, purchasing and general affairs, and human capital departments.

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Royal Air Maroc promotes females into senior management roles

In addition to reorganizing the airline, Hamid Addou is bringing seven women into senior management roles. The airline is a signatory to IATA's 25by2025 campaign to improve female representation in the airline industry.

While the campaign aims to see a minimum of 25% female participation in various roles across the industry by 2025, one specific target is women holding 25% of senior management or director positions at airlines by then.

The added female firepower in Royal Air Maroc's senior management ranks was part of a more extensive reshuffle of senior management roles at the airline.

According to Hamid Addou, a refreshed management combined with the broader reorganization of the airline should see Royal Air Maroc nicely positioned to handle any challenges flying in a post-COVID environment entails.