AIR MAURITIUS RETURNS TO PROFITABILITY
(Posted 01st March 2014)
Information received over a week ago, which inexplicably ended up in the spam box and was only retrieved today after the source in Port Louis made enquiries, paints a rosier picture for the financial future of Air Mauritius. A significant turnaround is now visible as the airline’s austerity and cost saving programme has taken root, showing a pretax profit of over 5.2 million Euros for the first 9 months of the 2013/14 financial year. For the same corresponding period in 2012/13 the airline was still in the red to the tune of over 3.1 million Euros.
Newly introduced flights to China have yielded more or less instant results while the cutting of other destinations resulted in major savings for the airline.
CEO Andre Viljoen was quoted to have said as the figures were presented: ‘L’objectif central du plan de transformation que nous avions lancé il y a deux ans était de restaurer la profi tabilité de la compagnie. Air Mauritius est donc sur la bonne voie’ or roughly translated into English ‘A key objective of the transformation plan launched two years ago was to return the airline to profitability. Air Mauritius is now on the right track’.
The increase in available seats resulted in a rise in passenger numbers by about 4 percent compared to a year ago but also slightly depressed the fleet average load factor from 80.7 percent to 79.2 percent inspite of increased competition which saw Emirates introduce a daily Airbus A380 flight which now operates in addition to a B777 daily frequency.
As reported here more recently has Air Mauritius renewed a partnership agreement with Air France / KLM (Air France is an equity partner in Air Mauritius) amid speculation of a potential future link up with global airline alliance SkyTeam. Watch this space for breaking and regular aviation news from the Indian Ocean islands.
