BA in the Black
from E-Tid this morning
Quote
British Airways has reported a pre-tax profit of £241m for the three months ended 30 September 2005.
This compares with £293m in the second quarter of last year, which benefited from £86m from the sale of the airline’s shares in Qantas.
Revenues were up 8.2% year-on-year at £2.205bn, while quarterly operating profit improved by 6.5% to £261m. Unit costs increased by 2.2% as fuel expenses jumped by 51.3%.
Passenger carryings during the three months slipped by 0.6% to 9.767m, but load factor grew by 1.1 percentage points to 79.6%. Yields were up 1.3%, turning around a decline of 5.1% in Q204.
Commenting on the figures new chief executive, Willie Walsh, said: ‘This is a reasonable set of results driven by improvements in revenue, seat factor and yield. It is clear, however, that we need to re-energise our drive on controllable costs. We have demonstrated time and again that it is possible to offer world-class service while improving unit costs.’
Unquote
"Drive on Controllable Costs" looks like code for massive job cuts to me.