PARIS (AFP) - Air France offered its ""deepest apologies"" to customers after scores of flights were cancelled due to striking staff, but said that 60 percent of its flights would take off Sunday.

After a day in which queues of frustrated, angry passengers built up at the main French airports, Air France put the blame squarely on the ""intransigence"" of the unions.
""Air France management offers its deepest apologies to its clients for the inconvenience to which they were subjected due to a situation that they neither wanted nor caused,"" said a statement released Saturday.
The strike had been totally unexpected and launched in the middle of talks that had been going on since June and which were scheduled to finish in December, the statement continued.
Air France called on the flight attendants to understand what their actions were doing to Air France passengers and noted the damage that this was doing to the company's reputation.
Hopes of a settlement were dashed late in the day after unions said they had turned down proposals by the airline to settle the dispute over pay and conditions.