Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- As CFO for nearly 7 years, Rémi got a 360° view of a business that is B2B, B2C, and B2G at once. It also means he trusts his own CFO completely and doesn’t micromanage.
- Rémi realized how essential the human dimension was to his responsibilities. His 20,000 employees all expect guidance, vision, and support.
- COVID exposed a short-term data gap: VINCI could plan for 40–60-year concessions but couldn’t say how many passengers it had the day before.
- With Pigment, CO2 reporting went from a manual, end-of-year exercise to part of quarterly reporting, with its own annual budget.
- Rémi puts AI use cases through rigorous tests: they must all have ample data prerequisites in place, global scalability, and real ROI.
VINCI Airports is the world’s leading private airport operator: it operates more than 70 airports across 14 countries, welcomes approximately 334 million passengers annually, and employs nearly 20,000 people. Rémi Maumon de Longevialle is the CEO of VINCI Airports. Previously, he served as the company’s Chief Financial Officer for nearly seven years before taking on his current role approximately 18 months ago.
What the CFO role taught him about the business
Depending on its activities, VINCI Airports operates as a B2B, B2C, or B2G business, as it manages airport concessions and therefore works closely with governments.
According to Rémi, his experience as CFO was extremely valuable because it gave him a 360-degree view of all the company’s activities.
Rémi has complete trust in his current CFO. Having held the position himself, he understands the processes and reporting requirements, as well as the approximately 20 CFOs across the business units operating in more than 70 airports. He gives his CFO the freedom to work in his own way, with just a few regular check-ins. This trust frees up his time to focus on other aspects of his role as CEO.
When Rémi became CEO, he realized how essential the human dimension was to his responsibilities. Leading nearly 20,000 people is demanding: they all expect their CEO to provide direction, vision, a listening ear, and support.
He also describes the wide variety of roles within VINCI Airports. Some employees negotiate with airlines (airports compete to attract new routes), while others focus on terminal layouts, retail spaces, or even the e-commerce strategy for airport parking.
Lasting lessons from COVID period
How can a company built around infrastructure designed to last for decades operate in a world where demand can change overnight?
According to Rémi, the COVID period marked the moment when the industry had to learn to adapt quickly. He had been CFO for approximately two years when air traffic came to an almost complete standstill overnight across the world. It took the aviation industry two to four years to return to its previous level of activity, far longer than in most sectors.
The crisis exposed the company’s lack of short-term data. VINCI Airports knew how to develop long-term business plans tied to concessions lasting 40 to 60 years and produced monthly, quarterly, and annual reports. But when asked, “How many passengers were in our terminals yesterday?” the answer was: “We need to wait a few days, or even a few weeks, to get accurate figures.”
Since then, the company has been working to balance short-term and long-term views of performance by developing tools to consolidate, monitor, and analyze both
The benefits of a unified platform
According to Rémi, the first benefit of implementing a single platform across the network was improving data collection, a task that is almost impossible to manage without the right tools across 20 operating units and more than 70 airports. Tracking CO₂ emissions is a clear example.
Previously, this process was manual and took place very late in the year. As CFO, he decided that emissions tracking needed to become part of performance management, even though it was not a financial metric.
Thanks to Pigment, it is now integrated into quarterly reporting and budget reviews, with an annual CO₂ emissions budget. VINCI Airports now knows where it stands in real time and can make more informed decisions.
How VINCI Airports uses AI
To forecast traffic, VINCI Airports has been using an internally developed machine learning tool for approximately three years. It generates alternative forecasts to those produced by internal experts. Rémi believes that the experts are still better, but their analyses take between one and three months, while the model is updated weekly at a very granular level, based on millions of passengers.
In operations, computer vision monitors the complex aircraft turnaround process at the gate, which takes between 30 and 45 minutes. Up to ten different companies work around the aircraft, with limited coordination.
The system therefore helps optimize the process by checking, among other things, whether baggage has been loaded, boarding has started, and the crew is present. This helps reduce delays, which is crucial to airport management.
In passenger services, AI agents now interact with travelers in terminals. They improve service and help the company better understand passengers’ expectations and needs.
A former CFO’s perspective on AI
According to Rémi, his experience as CFO helps him evaluate AI use cases.
He applies three criteria:
- Does the data exist, and is it standardized across airports? Without this, the project will struggle to get off the ground.
- Can the solution be deployed at scale? Airports sometimes proudly showcase tools that work locally but could never be rolled out globally.
- Will the solution generate a genuine return on investment, revenue, or value?
AI in decision-making
He describes recent advances as “spectacular,” with progress happening almost week by week.
He makes a clear distinction between two use cases. For labor-intensive tasks, AI is already mature, and VINCI Airports is running programs to map processes and encourage adoption.
When it comes to strategic decisions, he is much more cautious: AI can act as a challenger or a sounding board, much like the traffic forecasting model, and help inform judgment.
AI is a powerful and useful tool, but strategy remains in the hands of business leaders.
