BA's pre-tax profits for the last three months of 2004 dropped to £75m compared to £125m for the same period in 2003 after a 47.3% rise in its fuel bill.
The UK national carrier said the increased fuel charges and employee costs had forced its operating expenditure up by 6.3% to £1.86bn.
Its operating profit fell by 20.3% from £138m year on year to £110m
CEO Rod Eddington said: “These are respectable results in a quarter where fuel costs increased by £106 million.”
Chairman Martin Broughton added: “Market conditions for the current financial year remain broadly unchanged. For the year to March 2005, the total revenue outlook is slightly better than previous guidance with a 3.0-3.5 per cent improvement anticipated. All market segments remain price sensitive and yield declines are expected to continue.
“Fuel costs net of hedging are still expected to be about £245 million more than last year. Passenger and cargo fuel surcharges partially offset this increase.”
In better news for the airline, BA said it had a rise of 11.8% in its business class traffic for January 2005 compared with the same month in 2004. It also reported a 7.5% rise in economy traffic for the same period.
The result was that overall capacity, measured in Available Seat Kilometres, was up 3.2% while overall traffic, measured in Revenue Passenger Kilometres, was up by 8.1%.
* Air France-KLM reported “buoyant” figures for January with a 10.3% growth in passenger traffic and a “significantly improved” load factor of 78%, up 3.3%
The group said that all its networks had achieved better figures with traffic in the Americas up by 9.6% and in Asia by 17%. Capacity in each region had also risen.
Traffic on its medium-haul network rose by 8.8% with capacity up by 3.7%.