The corona pandemic brought the Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines deep red numbers. The company hopes that they can catch up as much as possible over the year as a whole.

Since March 19, 2020, the entire Austrian Airlines fleet has been on the ground due to the pandemic. Even before that, the flight schedule for China and then for Europe had to be cut drastically due to the spread of the Corona Virus. Even if the far greater effects will fall in the second quarter, the corona-related development is also reflected in the financial figures for the first quarter: the airline's revenue and passenger numbers fell by around a quarter compared to the previous year. Based on this, Austrian Airlines had to post adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (adjusted EBIT) of EUR -2 million in the first three months of the current year.

Austrian Airlines CFO Wolfgang Jani on the development: “The pandemic hit our company with full force. This blow is also reflected in the result. We will probably only see the full effects in the next few months. But it is already foreseeable that we will need years to digest the crisis. "

Austrian Airlines carried 1,9 million passengers in the first three months of the current year. That is 27 percent less than in the same period last year. The offer measured in offered seat kilometers (ASK) had to be reduced by 19 percent to 4,5 billion. Due to the crisis, the load factor fell to 68,2 percent. In March, many passengers did not even take their flight despite having booked.

The regularity, which is not very meaningful due to the corona, was reduced to 2020 percent in the first quarter of 95,2. The departure punctuality could be improved to 88,1 percent, the arrival punctuality to 88,6 percent. During this period, Austrian Airlines operated 22.727 flights, i.e. a good 253 flights per day.

Sales in the first quarter fell by 24 percent to 287 million euros, and total revenues also fell by 24 percent to 304 million euros. Although the costs could be reduced significantly through various measures, but not to the same extent as the loss of revenue: The operating expenses fell by twelve percent to 440 million euros. The result, expressed as adjusted EBIT (adjusted earnings before interest income and taxes) is -136 million euros and thus 37 percent below the previous year (Q1 2019: -99 million euros). The EBIT slumped to -197 million euros. The reason for the discrepancy between Adj. EBIT and EBIT is a reassessment of the aircraft fleet. (For details, see the table on the last page.)

Austrian Airlines will start its flight operations again on June 15, initially with a lower capacity than usual. For the full year 2020, the airline expects a pandemic-related reduction in the offer to around 25-50 percent. CFO Wolfgang Jani: “The result will naturally suffer enormously. We are currently in the process of reducing the foreseeable annual loss as much as possible through countermeasures. "