Net loss of Austrian Airlines in first six months reaches 6.7 mln euros

The Austrian Airlines has posted an operating loss of 6.7 million euros (about 8.71 million U.S. dollar) for the first six months of 2010, about 28.3 percent less than during the same period of the previous year, the airlines said in a statement on Thursday.

Austrian Airlines was taken over by the Lufthansa Group in September, 2009 and since then a restructuring plan has been implemented.

Chief Commercial Officer of the airlines'executive board Andreas Bierwirth and its Chief Operating Officer Peter Manlink issued a joint statement, saying that "our measures are working, we are on the right track."

Meanwhile, they also admitted that, "we have not yet achieved our goal. We can't stop, must continue to implement our restructuring plan".

Though factors such as a large number of flight cancellations triggered by Iceland's volcanic ash and the high crude oil price have led a great loss to the Austrian Airlines, its operating revenue still reached 1.03 billion euros for the first half of this year, which was 6 percent higher as compared with the same period of 2009.

In addition, the data also showed that, in the first six months of this year, Austrian Airlines carried about 5 million passengers, which is 8.8 percent higher compared with the same period of 2009.

The airlines also believed that, if their flights hadn't been influenced by the volcanic ash, the number of passengers was expected to have a double-digit growth during the first half of this year.

The executive board of Austrian Airlines is quite optimistic about their future operating income growth, who believed that the operation cost this year can be reduced by 250 million euros through continuously effective control of cash flow. (1 U.S. dollar = 0.7693 euros)

Source: Xinhua