Air France-KLM profit, shares fall sharply

* Q2 operating profit down 44 percent

* Cuts profit target, boosts savings

* Shares fall sharply

(Adds Alitalia partner timing in line 73)

By Matthias Blamont and Tim Hepher

PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's largest airline Air France-KLM (AIRF.PA) on Thursday braced itself for hard economic times with extra cost savings and withdrew a detailed full-year earnings forecast after a 44 percent drop in quarterly operating profit.

Its stock fell almost 10 percent and remained 9.15 percent lower at 1513 GMT as the airline seen as more immune from economic crisis because it is less reliant on business class travellers than arch-rival British Airways (BAY.L) also scaled back expansion plans.

Thursday's half-year results came a day after international airlines lobby IATA reported business and first-class air travel had dropped sharply in September due to the financial crisis.

Air France-KLM insisted it was able to withstand a drop in worldwide premium travel and other key traffic because of the broad reach of its network, feeding traffic into twin Paris and Amsterdam hubs joined by a 2004 Franco-Dutch airline merger.