British Airways reveal low summer travel
August 7, 2008
The summer travel boom hasn’t happened for British Airways, last month its aircraft flew nearly one quarter empty.
BA had 94,000 less passengers than in July, its thought higher fares and a bad economic environment are to blame. An indication of how full each flight is is the airlines load factor, which fell 5.4% to 75.8%.
Summer is usually when aircraft are fullest as this is when most of Europe goes on holiday. BA hasn’t seen this materialize and hasn’t seen the increase it expected. The load factor of 75% is more typical of late autumn or early spring.
The news of BA’s traffic figures came as Iberia, the Spanish carrier said it would buy more than £200 million of shares in British Airways.
Iberia’s chairman and chief executive, Fernando Conte said on Monday that he planned to raise the Spanish holding in BA by up to the same amount held through derivatives.
For an additional £217 million Iberia could increase the stake to just fewer than 10%. BA owns 13.15% of Iberia and so the Spanish carrier’s purchase of extra shares will help to balance assets between the two airlines.
As the bigger partner, this could cut the premium that BA would pay in the event of a merger.
Mr Conte said “Iberia intends over the coming months to acquire additional British Airways shares and to close the equivalent part of the derivatives long position.”
For more information on British Airways see www.britishairways.com and for more information on Iberia visit www.iberia.com.
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