Mumbai, Aug 11: Kingfisher Airlines has said its net loss for the first quarter ended June 30 widened 41 per cent to Rs 264 crore on higher fuel costs, which rose 44 per cent, despite 15 per cent rise in operating income to Rs 1,882 crore.
During the same period last fiscal, the country's second largest airline by market share had reported a loss of Rs 187 crore on a revenue of Rs 1,641 crore. The private carrier's passenger revenue, too, recorded a growth of over 16 per cent in the reporting quarter.
Similarly, there was an 84 per cent spike in its non-operating revenues to Rs 29 crore from Rs 16 crore. The rising oil prices have been eating into the margins of airlines, and last month, the largest carrier by market share, Jet Airways, had reported a first-quarter net loss of Rs 123 crore.
Kingfisher carried 3.41 million passengers during the quarter, a rise of 9 per cent y-o-y, while its total number of flights rose 3 per cent to 34,627. The Vijay Mallya-promoted airline said its earnings margin before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization shrank to 0.2 per cent from 6 per cent a year earlier.
Revenue per passenger, too, increased by 6 per cent to Rs 5,007. The airline had a fleet size of 66 as of end-June. Kingfisher's operating profit on its domestic operations fell 71 per cent to Rs 440 cror during the April-June period. Operating loss on international operations narrowed to Rs 400 crore from Rs 510 crore a year ago. Domestic operating revenue rose 10 per cent to Rs 1,459 crore over y-o-y on a 11 per cent increase in passenger revenue.
On the international operations side, the airline's operating revenue rose 33 per cent to Rs 422 crore on a 37 per cent rise in passenger revenues.
The domestic aviation industry, as a whole, saw demand rising by 15 per cent during the quarter, making it the eighth consistent quarter reporting double-digit demand growth. This was despite a drop in the load factor which declined from 81 per cent in Q1 of FY11 to 78 per cent in the quarter under review.
However, Kingfisher said it bucked this trend to grow load factor by 4 percentage points over the same quarter last year, taking it to 85 per cent. PTI
