British Airways posted a surprise third-quarter operating profit, reflecting a 10.5 percent reduction in costs, but said it still expected to make a record loss in the full year.
The British flag carrier yesterday reported an operating profit of £25 million (US$39 million) in the three months to the end of December, while revenues fell 13 percent.
“These results highlight the impact of permanent changes across the company on our costs,” BA’s chief executive Willie Walsh said in a statement.
“Those changes, combined with capacity reductions and external spending cuts, mean operating costs are down by 10.5 percent and show that we’ve adapted quickly to the new business realities created by the global recession,” he said.
Analysts had expected BA to report a third-quarter operating loss of between £90 million and £100 million.
BA’s operating loss came in at £86 million for the first nine months of the year, sharply down from a profit of £89 million it made in the same period a year ago.
The airline said it carried 7 percent fewer passengers last month year-on-year.
The number of its premium, or business class, passengers fell 2.1 percent year-on-year, while non-premium traffic fell 7.9 percent on the same month last year, it said.
Meanwhile, Boeing Co has reports 10 new aircraft orders for last month, all of them for Ethiopian Airlines.
The Chicago-based aircraft maker says the order for its 737-800 planes came in on Jan. 12. About two weeks after the order came in, that airline lost the same type of aircraft in a crash off the coast of Lebanon.
It was Boeing’s slowest January for orders since 2000, when it booked orders for only four planes. The recession has made airlines cautious about ordering aircraft.
Even though it has few new orders, Boeing still has plenty of planes to build. It ended last year with a backlog of 3,375 commercial aircraft.
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