Austrian Airlines slightly improved its operating results by €1 million compared to the prior-year quarter. Austrian Airlines reported a negative EBIT of minus €53 million in the first quarter of 2015 (Q1 2014: minus €54 million).
“In our part of the world, the first quarter is a traditionally difficult period. For this reason we focused on leveraging further cost effects in winter of 2014/15, which we succeeded in doing thanks to an improved maintenance concept,” says Austrian Airlines Chief Financial Officer Heinz Lachinger. “In the upcoming winter we are aiming to generate further revenue effects with a more seasonally adjusted flight schedule, including Mauritius, Colombo and Miami as new long-haul tourist destinations.”
In the period January to March 2015, revenue of Austrian Airlines fell 3.3 percent year-on-year to €390 million. However, yields clearly improved so that total operating revenue could be increased by 1.0% to €427 million in spite of the reduced passenger volume and flight offering. Total operating expenditures rose by 0.7 percent to €480 million from the prior-year level of €476 million, which can be attributed to higher maintenance costs, as several major technical checks have been rescheduled to winter. In the first quarter of 2015, EBIT amounted to minus €53 million, an improvement of €1 million or 2.0 percent compared to the first three months of 2014.
The Supervisory Board meeting of Austrian Airlines held on March 19, 2015 gave its official go-ahead to the replacement of Fokker aircraft with Embraer medium-haul aircraft which are currently being deployed by Lufthansa CityLine. The fleet renewal drive should start at the turn of the year 2015/16 and is scheduled to be concluded by the end of 2017.
In the first three months of 2015, two million passengers flew with Austrian Airlines, corresponding to a decline of 11.9 percent from the previous year. The flight offering was intentionally reduced by 6.9 percent in order to generate yield-improving effects. As a consequence, revenue passenger kilometers fell by 8.3 percent, whereas capacity utilization of the flights was down 1.2 percentage points to 73.1 percent.
Austrian Airlines operated a total of 27,507 flights using 74 aircraft in the first quarter of 2015, or the equivalent of 305.6 flights per day. The regularity of flight operations amounted to 99.2 percent and the rate of punctuality on departure was 91.1 percent. As a result, Austrian Airlines continues to be one of the most punctual airlines in the world.
Austrian Airlines stated that it expects additional earnings-improving effects from its successful ongoing restructuring program.
“Following very tough years with an emphasis on restructuring the company, we want to focus more strongly on our customers and the further development of our business”, states Austrian Airlines Chief Executive Officer Jaan Albrecht. In spite of a continuing difficult competitive situation, Austrian Airlines anticipates an improvement in its EBIT for the entire year 2015. In 2014, Austrian Airlines generated an adjusted EBIT of €9 million (reported operating profit of €10 million).