GO, the no-frills airline put up for sale by British Airways this week, reported another annual loss yesterday, confirming its place near the bottom of the league table of European budget carriers.
But the young airline, which reported a pre-tax loss of £21.8 million sterling (€36.29 million) for the year to March 31st last, said it was on track for break-even in 2001.
Go, set up only in 1998, trails Ryanair and EasyJet in the increasingly competitive European market for budget travel, where passengers go without an onboard meal and airline lounges on short-haul flights in return for cheap fares.
Ryanair showed earlier in the day just how much daylight existed between it and Go, reporting a 49 per cent rise in half-year net earnings.
Ryanair has a market value of around €3.4 billion (£2.7 billion).
Privately-owned UK airline EasyJet is heading towards a stock market flotation and has set its price tag at around £564 million sterling.
EasyJet, with annual pre-tax earnings of £22 million, aims to list this month.
But aviation analyst Mr Damien Horth, of investment bank ABN Amro, said Go was still going through growing pains.
"You can't expect a business growing that quickly to make money," Mr Horth said.
He added that investors still needed to see Go's balance sheet before they could truly assess its value.
Analysts have made back-of-the-envelope valuations of £300£400 million sterling. Go said it had carried two million passengers compared with 800,000 in its first 17 months - the last period for which Europe's third biggest budget airline announced results.
Net revenues rose to £100.6 million from £31.6 million in the previous period, but pre-tax losses narrowed only marginally to £21.8 million from £22.5 million.
The airline's after-tax performance also improved slightly, with losses falling to £15.2 million from £15.5 million.
But the airline reiterated that it had made a profit every month of this year and would meet the breakeven target it set for itself at its inception by BA in 1998.
BA announced on Monday it planned to sell Go, saying it no longer made sense to keep a budget airline while the group's strategy was to focus on higher-paying travellers.
