CityJet cuts losses to €10m as revenues fall by 8.5%

Losses at Irish airline CityJet fell to €10 million last year from more than three times that in 2014, latest figures show.

Accounts filed by CityJet Designated Activity Company show that the Dublin-based carrier's revenues fell 8.5 per cent to €165 million in 2015 from €180 million the previous year.

Its operations lost €10 million last year, less than a third of the €30.6 million deficit it recorded in 2014. Net assets stood at €60 million on December 31st, almost 11 per cent more than 12 months earlier, when they were €54.7 million.

Executive chairman Pat Byrne said the fall in revenue was largely down to the fact that it stopped flying loss-making routes, including a number of services from Cardiff Airport in Wales, during 2015.

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“We just shut down services that did not make any sense, that reduced the revenue, but it helped to dramatically reduce losses,” he said. Revenues in 2016 are running at 30 per cent more than last year.

New aircraft

The company will cut losses further this year. Its executive chairman said spending on new craft and on training crew added to expenses in 2016, but that it should generate a surplus in 2017.

A carrying loss that resulted from its takeover and restructuring of Finnish airline Blue1 Oy on November 1st, 2015 hit its results in 2015. Mr Byrne said losses would have been lower still if it had not done this.

CityJet effectively shut this business for four months, from the beginning of November 2015 to the end of February this year, while it prepared to relaunch it to operate a series of routes under contract to Scandinavian group, SAS.

This meant that it had to account for the losses from this over the last two months of 2015 and the first two of this year. However, Mr Byrne said it was now performing well.

It has eight Bombardier CRJ900 jets flying on the SAS services and plans to take delivery of another four in March. It also took the first three of 15 SSJ100 Superjets.

CityJet now employs more than 900 staff, an 80 per cent increase on 2015. Half its fleet flies services on contract for other airlines – known as wet-leasing – and it aims to shift this to 80 per cent as the business grows.

“We have a total fleet today of 26 aircraft, with an additional nine aircraft due in 2017. This contrasts with a total fleet of 17 at the end of 2015,” Mr Byrne said.