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Qatar Airways reported on Monday that as the coronavirus pandemic has weakened the demand for long-distance travel, its annual revenue loss exceeded US$4 billion and the number of passengers dropped by 82% year-on-year.
Qatar Airways announced on Monday that the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has reduced the demand for long-distance travel and that it lost more than $4 billion in revenue in the previous fiscal year.
The main loss of the state-owned airline was mainly due to the grounding of its Airbus A380 and A330 wide-body jets, highlighting the huge losses the pandemic has caused to the industry.
Even so, the Doha-based airline reported that compared with the previous year, its pre-tax and other cost earnings increased to $1.6 billion-due to the airline’s savings in jet fuel and a 15% reduction in cost. Salaries have been reduced by approximately 13,400 employees, so costs have dropped significantly. Its labor force. The pandemic has hit international routes the most severely, and it has dealt a heavy blow to the Persian Gulf super connector, which basically lacks a domestic market.
In the past few months, the flagship airline has ended a multi-year boycott, locking Qatar Airways out of the airspace of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The embargo forced the airline to take longer routes and consume more jet fuel, thereby increasing expenses. Since 2017, as the political dispute eased in January, the energy-rich national airline has reopened its main routes to hubs such as Dubai, Cairo and Riyadh.
Faced with the virus variant that is still spreading rapidly around the world, the parent airline praised its resilience and pointed out that its $288 million operating loss was 7% less than the previous year.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker said in a statement: “Although our competitors have grounded their aircraft and closed their routes, we have adjusted our entire commercial operations to cope with the ever-changing travel. Restricted and never stopped flying.”
The airline admitted to receiving a lifeline of $3 billion from the government of Qatar to continue operations as it fights virus restrictions. The airline’s revenue fell to more than US$8 billion from US$14 billion in the previous year. The airline incurred as much as US$2.3 billion in expenses due to the grounding of its wide-body fleet.
In the last fiscal year, the airline carried only 5.8 million passengers, compared with 32.3 million in the previous year—a shocking 82% drop.
Qatar Airways operates approximately 250 aircraft at Hamad International Airport in Doha, following the model of other Gulf Airlines, connecting east and west from its location on the Arabian Peninsula. Two other airlines in the region that rely on lucrative long-haul routes, Dubai-based Emirates and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways, have also fallen into turmoil due to the pandemic and have lost data in the past year. Billions of dollars.
For example, Emirates reported a loss of US$5.5 billion last year and received a cash injection of US$3.1 billion from the Dubai government.
Qatar Airways mentioned some signs of recovery, as vaccination against the coronavirus is accelerating worldwide. From 33 destinations at the height of the pandemic, the airline now flies to more than 140 and has expanded to new markets from Seattle, Washington, USA to Brisbane, Australia.
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