Dipping passenger traffic and rising operational costs broke the flight of Jet Airways with its net loss soaring to Rs 214.2 crore for the third quarter ended December 2008,as compared with Rs 91.1 crore in the year-ago period. On a quarter-on-quarter basis,it managed to pare losses from Rs 384.5 crore in the second quarter of this fiscal. Jet Airways said that a general slowdown in traffic,both corporate and leisure,has led to an 18 per cent decline in overall market in Q3,accentuated by the Mumbai terror attacks. While domestic operations showed an increase in yield by 23.3 per cent over the same period a year ago,total income rose 21.7 per cent to Rs 3,063.1 crore in Q3 as compared with the year-ago period. Income during the nine-month period rose nearly 49 per cent to Rs 9,220.7 crore,up 36.5 per cent from the same period last fiscal. However,the airlines subsidiary JetLite managed to pare losses for the quarter to Rs 22 crore from Rs 86 crore in the same quarter last year. The synergy between Jet Airways and JetLite has reflected on JetLites operations. There has been integration at the back-end,network optimisation and cost-cutting for JetLite which has resulted in it being able to pull down losses considerably, said Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation CEO Kapil Kaul. The revenue from Jet Airways international operations now account for 54.3 per cent of operating revenues. The share of domestic operations fell to 45.7 per cent from 63.5 per cent in Q3 of last year. The company achieved a domestic seat factor of 62.4per cent in the quarter ended December 2008 versus 72.3 per cent in the same period a year ago. Domestic operations were expected to show better results this quarter. The total revenue has gone up on account of fuel surcharges which led to better yields,benefiting airlines in the November-December period, Kaul added. On the outlook for the next quarter,it said,The domestic industry capacity will be flat for the next few quarters and with the increase in traffic over the next few months,we believe the industry seat factors will trend up,though,at lower yields. However,Kaul said the Q4 results are likely to see more bloodbath on the companys balance sheet as demands softens and full service carrier begin to offer fairs closer to low-cost airlines. Shares of Jet Airways closed at Rs 157.05,up 1.26 per cent on the BSE. With this,net loss stood at Rs 455.33 crore for the period ended December 31,2008 against Rs 31.9 crore in the same period a year-ago.
