Mr. Gourgeon, 65, held the chief executive posts of the combined group and of its Air France unit. Alexandre de Juniac, 48, an adviser to the French finance minister, François Baroin, is expected to take the helm of Air France sometime next month, the company said. The appointment of Mr. Juniac, a civil servant who also has worked in the aeronautics industry, is subject to approval by a government ethics committee.

Air France-KLM said its chairman, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, would assume chief executive duties at the parent company until the creation of the new holding company structure. Mr. Spinetta ran Air France for a decade until 2009, with Mr. Gourgeon as his deputy.

Leo Van Wijk, the chief executive of KLM, will become the group’s deputy chief executive. Philippe Calavia will remain as chief financial officer, the company said.

Analysts said the surprise could well signal a major reorganization and a shift in strategy by the airline, which is Europe’s largest by revenue.

“This is a major shock — nothing like this has ever been seen at this company,” said Yan Derocles, an airline industry analyst at Oddo Securities in Paris. “I expect it will be accompanied by significant structural measures.”

The move came after Mr. Gourgeon was re-appointed in July to a new four-year mandate as head of the group holding company, part of a management reorganization that would have seen him give up his dual role at Air France in January. Mr. Gourgeon had personally advocated for Mr. Juniac, who has no previous experience in the airline industry, to succeed him at the French unit.

French media reports said Mr. Gourgeon was informed Friday of the decision to replace him, with some reports suggesting that the move was at the instigation of Mr. Spinetta, his one-time mentor, because of his frustration with the company’s financial performance.

Neither Mr. Gourgeon nor Mr. Spinetta could be reached to comment on the accounts.

Mr. Gourgeon, who trained as a fighter pilot, presided over a troubled two years that included the crash of an Airbus A330 over the mid-Atlantic in June 2009 that killed all 228 people on board. Both Air France and Airbus face accusations of involuntary manslaughter in the case, which is still under investigation.

An interim report by French accident investigators indicated that the pilots of the plane had not received training that could have helped them avert disaster. The airline’s management, which last year ordered a top-down audit of its safety procedures, has rejected criticism of its pilot training program and has asserted instead that a “misleading” pattern of cockpit alarms on the Airbus jet contributed to the crew’s difficulties.

The airline also has struggled more than many of its peers to recover from the economic crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008. For the three months through June it swung to a net loss of €197 million, or about $270 million, from a €736 million profit a year earlier — a result the airline attributed to rising fuel prices and a drop in traffic linked to unrest in the Middle East and the nuclear crisis in Japan. The group has forecast a modest operating profit for 2011, though that is much weaker than the roughly €1 billion that analysts predict for Lufthansa this year and the €600 million for International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia of Spain.

Analysts said its weak performance made the group particularly vulnerable if the global economy should slip back into a recession. Nonetheless, during a briefing with journalists in September, Mr. Gourgeon said he believed Air France-KLM had emerged from the “violent” 2009 downturn in a healthier position.

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