Air Deccan registers highest loss ever

Costs of an ongoing merger, a lean passenger season, and softening ticket yields have seen India’s biggest low-cost airline, Air Deccan, posting its largest ever quarterly net loss of Rs253.18 crore in July-September, its first quarter this year, nearly six times the loss in the year-ago period.
The performance signals continued financial challenges for a carrier attempting to reinvent itself after a buyout and a new chief executive took over at the helm of the airline.
The losses in the comparable period last year were just under Rs43 crore for the quarter ended September 2006, but the airline then had seen a one-time income from outside sources made on asset sales. In just this one quarter, the airline’s losses equal 55% of the company’s annual losses for the last financial year, which it ended on 30 June with about Rs419 crore in the red.
Deccan Aviation Ltd, the airline’s parent company, has been in transition after United Breweries (Holdings) Ltd bought out a 26% stake in the airline on 1 June. Since then, both Deccan and Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, which is also owned by United Breweries, have worked together to improve Deccan’s performance and customer perception, which had suffered because of late flights, cancellations and the physical condition of the company’s planes.
02/11/07 Mehul Srivastava/Livemint

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Categories: Simplifly Deccan Nov 2007