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Korean Air posts third quarter net loss, reports continuing sluggish passenger demand
November 6th 2020
Announcing a net loss of 385.9 billion won (US$305.8 million) for its third quarter, to September 30, Korean Air (KAL) this week forecast passenger demand would remain depressed until the end of the year. Read More »
The latest quarterly loss was a deterioration from a net loss of 211.8 billion won for the same months in 2019. Revenue dropped 53%, to 3.3 trillion won, KAL said in a statement. Its passenger business suffered from "sluggish demand" due to COVID-19 and was expected to continue to decline in the fourth quarter.
“The aviation industry continues to suffer from the pandemic and the outlook is still bad," KAL CEO, Walter Cho, said. The airline said there were positives in the third quarter, with some quarter-on-quarter improvement on mid and long-haul routes to the Americas, Europe and East Asia due to more charter flights for corporate travellers, services for transporting Korean residents and an easing of international travel restrictions to some countries such as Singapore and Malaysia. There also had been a lift in domestic demand in the summer holiday period.
For the reported months, KAL’s routes to the Americas made up 47% of all sales compared with 30% a year ago. Similarly, domestic routes accounted for 24% of all sales, from 6% in the 2019 September quarter.