OREANDA-NEWS. Latvian airline airBaltic has achieved a net profit of EUR +13.2 million in the third quarter of 2013. airBaltic has by far surpassed its original plans and turned around last year’s loss of EUR -26.72 million into a net profit of EUR +0.72 million in the nine months Jan-Sept 2013.

Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: “We have restructured airBaltic through cost control,  capacity management and efficiency gains, and we achieved an impressive improvement of the net result in the first nine months of EUR +27.47 million compared to the same period a year ago. It makes our airBaltic ReShape turnaround plan a success story”.

“Becoming profitable was a painful exercise, requiring a scrupulous and careful re-evaluation of every aspect of the business”, Martin Gauss explained. “And, yes, it required concessions as well. We had to end operations on several routes. We also reduced our total amount of aircraft from 34 to 25. Again, this was done as part of our fundamental fleet modernisation programme. This summer, we also improved our flight schedules and achieved substantial efficiency gains by flying each of our aircraft about 15% more. From a business perspective, airplanes are “factories” with wings, and better aircraft utilisation means less time on the ground and lower unit costs, which we can pass on to our customers.”

airBaltic achieved +4% unit revenue improvements (RASK- revenue per available seat kilometre) over Jan-Sep 2013, compared to the same period a year ago, and generated revenues of EUR 255.96 million, thus achieving +2% improvement compared to a year ago, despite capacity reductions.