"There is a very strong appetite for travel", with sales for the moment being better than in 2018, underlined Mr. Farandou on Franceinfo.
The 2019 Christmas holidays had been affected by the strike against the pension reform and those of 2020 by the pandemic.
"We are crossing our fingers" as the fifth wave of the coronavirus begins to sweep over France, noted Mr. Farandou, who does not think "for the moment" to relax the possibility of canceling his trip less than 3 days before the departure.
"Since the start of the school year, things have been better" at the SNCF, he also indicated.
"On a normal day we returned to a correct, balanced situation, not quite at the level perhaps of 2019 (before the health crisis) but very close".
"As long as it lasts," he exclaimed.
The public group will be in the red for the whole of 2021 because the first half was bad but "less than last year" when it lost 3 billion euros, he predicted.
"The Covid has upset the entire economic balance of the company", recalled the manager in another interview with the magazine Challenges, published Thursday.
"We had 6 billion less revenue. We had to urgently save 2.5 billion euros. And this year we expect another 1.5 billion savings," he said.
"It is therefore difficult to increase salaries even if we have just proposed an increase for the lowest salaries," he noted.
Jean-Pierre Farandou also responded on Franceinfo to a study by the Pasteur Institute which points to the risk of being contaminated in public transport.
There is "no apparent cluster neither among our travelers, nor among our staff on board the trains", insisted the CEO of the SNCF, noting in particular that the controllers who "spend their life in the trains" do not were not particularly affected.
© 2021 AFP