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| Sunday, 15 February 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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British Airways pre- tax profit yields better results British Airways reported a pre-tax profit of pounds 125 million for the three months October to December 2003 (3rd quarter) against a pre-tax profit of pounds 25 million for the same period of the previous year(2002). The three month pre-tax profit took the results for the nine months (Apr-Dec 2003) to a profit of pounds 185 million. Rod Eddington, British Airways chief executive, said: "We have survived the most testing period in aviation history. It has been possible due to the determination of our people to keep British Airways flying through these troubled times, while taking œ1.7 billion costs out of the business. "These are good results and a significant improvement on last year, thus indicating what we can achieve when we are focused on delivering our cost targets. For example, under our future size and shape programme, manpower reductions stand at 12,652 as against a 13,000 goal to be achieved by March 2004. "The challenge now is to build on our achievements and deliver sustained profitability through further cost reductions while continuing to deliver great service. We will continue to simplify the travel experience for customers through better use of new technology. "Half of our customers now use e-tickets and at peak times our ba.com website takes 1000 flight bookings and our customers can also now choose their seats and order special meals through ba.com and later this year they will be able to change unrestricted tickets on-line. In an average week, a quarter of a million members of our Executive Club loyalty scheme log on to the site. "Delivering the pounds 300 million saving on employee costs we announced recently, with other business plan initiatives, will lead to achieve a 10 per cent operating margin." Lord Marshall. Chairman, said: "Security issues are having some impact on forward bookings. Long-haul premium volumes, however, remain above last year's levels but short-haul premium demand remains weak. Non-premium traffic volumes remain very sensitive to yield. The continued delivery of our future size and shape strategy and the recently announced business plan cost improvement programme, remains central to sustained profitability." Unit costs improved for the seventh consecutive quarter and were down by 5.4 percent during the same period last year. This reflects a net cost reduction of 2.9 per cent on capacity, 2.7 percent higher in available tonne kilometres (ATKs). |
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