Air France KLM, one of Europe’s largest airline carriers, has reported their third quarter results.
The operating loss was announced to be us$ 124.6 million loss, while its cargo volumes was better than the us$ 156.9 million the airline lost in the 3th quarter of 2014.
Cargo volumes during Q3 of 2015 were 301,000 tons, lower than last year’s 312,000 tons. Air France KLM continued to restructure its full-freighter activity to address global trade slowing down and facing the overcapacity in the cargo market. Main-deck capacity was reduced by 30 %, y-o-y, while belly capacity performed stable at a positive 0.2 %.
The carrier stated that Q3 year-over-year comparison was heavily affected by the pilot’s strike. The strike also had an impact on fourth quarter 2014 revenues of an estimated us$ 146 million impact on revenue and operating results.
Overall revenue for the group in the third quarter this year of us$11.4 billion was up 4.2 % , excluding the strike impact, but down with 2.4 %, like-for-like. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and restructuring (EBITDAR) for the quarter was us$ 4.09 billion, an improvement of us$ 597 million, like-for-like.
Alexandre de Juniac, Air France-KLM’s chairman of the board of directors, claimed that the groups’ “Perform 2020” reorganization plan will be vital to the carrier’s turnaround, since unit-cost reduction is AF-KLM’s “main lever enabling the group to return to a profitable growth in a highly competitive economic situation”
