29th Apr 2016 06:51
LONDON (Alliance News) - International Consolidated Airlines Group on Friday said it swung to a pretax profit in the first quarter of 2016, boosted by growth in traffic, passenger numbers and revenue. The first quarter of the year is traditionally quiet for airlines.
IAG - which owns British Airways, Ireland's Aer Lingus, and Spanish carriers Iberia and Vueling - said it made a pretax profit of EUR124 million in the three months to March 31, having suffered a EUR37 million pretax loss in the first quarter of 2015.
Operating profit increased to EUR168 million from EUR25 million a year before.
Revenue grew to EUR5.08 billion from EUR4.71 billion, boosted by 14% growth in traffic measured in revenue passenger kilometres, and a 22% rise in passenger numbers.
IAG said revenue in January and February was in line with the trends seen in the fourth quarter of 2015, while March revenue was helped by the earlier timing of Easter but hurt by the terrorist attacks in Brussels. It said the effects of the Brussels attacks are continuing into the second quarter.
"Revenue trends in quarter two have been affected by the aftermath of the Brussels terrorist attacks, as well as some softness in underlying premium demand. As a result, IAG has moderated its short-term capacity growth plans. The group also expects to reduce its underlying ex-fuel unit costs for the full year by around 1%. Consequently, in 2016, IAG still expects to generate an absolute operating profit increase similar to 2015," IAG said in a statement.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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