CEO: Pobeda to post serious loss for January–March

MOSCOW, Apr 2 (PRIME) -- Low-cost airline Pobeda, a unit of national flagship carrier Aeroflot, expects to post a serious loss for January–March, CEO Andrei Kalmykov told reporters on Thursday.

“On April 10, we will summarize the results of the first quarter, but it is already clear that there will be a serious loss,” he said.

On Wednesday, the airline completed a program of evacuation flights having spent around 125 million rubles on empty flights, Kalmykov said.

“In March, Pobeda focused on the export program. This means that, contrary to financial logic, we drove empty planes to return as many of our customers as possible to Russia. On April 1, we completed the export flights program,” he said.

“We made 50 empty flights only on foreign routes. And imagine that an average empty flight costs a company 2.5 million rubles,” he said.

Load on the company’s domestic flights was at a record low of 55–56% in March, although all tickets for the flights had been sold, he added.

Pobeda suspended all its flights from Wednesday until May 31 amid the coronavirus pandemic in order to focus on the anti-crisis program and prepare to restoration of flights.

“Suspension of flights is the only reasonable measure for us in the current conditions,” Kalmykov said.

He also said that some of the airline’s crew members have a confirmed coronavirus.

(77.7325 rubles – U.S. $1)

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