Aeroflot has published its financial results for 2019. Its revenues grew by 10.8% year-on-year to roughly $10,209 million, or RUB 677,881 million. The high numbers are evidence of a record year for Russian aviation as a whole. What the books will look like when closing 2020 remains to be seen.
A difficult first half year
Aeroflot reported a difficult start to the year with consistently high fuel prices and pressures on the airline’s costs in currencies other than the Russian ruble. The second quarter was marked by a rise in fuel costs due to the closure of airspace over Pakistan. This lead to longer flight times to the airline’s destinations in Thailand, India and Vietnam.
The summer of 2018 was, of course, a hard one to beat with so many traveling to Russia during the FIFA World Cup. However, the airline came back to finish 2019 strong. Andrey Chikhanchin, PJSC Aeroflot Deputy CEO for Commerce and Finance, said in a press release on Tuesday,
“Stronger 4Q 2019 results were achieved thanks to a number of revenue- and cost-management initiatives taken by the management team, including active capacity management, the introduction of additional services to increase passenger comfort, and strict cost control.”
The increase in revenue meant that Aeroflot saw a net profit of $203.5 million, or RUB 13,512 million. It carried 60.7 million passengers, which was an increase of 9% from 2018 and operated a total of 272,529 flights across a distance of just under 533 million kilometers. Furthermore, Aeroflot was the most punctual airline of the year according to Cirium, with 87.6% of its flights arriving at their destination on time.
In good company
Aeroflot is not the only Russian airline to have had a great 2019. Russian aviation had a fantastic year overall, with airlines serving 10.8% more passengers than the year prior. Collectively, across the Russian airline board, airlines carried a total of 130 million passengers. The largest airlines in Russia are Aeroflot, S7 Airlines, Rossiya, Ural Airlines and Pobeda. All five of them have registered impressive growth for the past year.
What will 2020 look like?
To pull off the same kind of figures in 2020 would take an incredible effort, however. The industry have already taken a massive hit to revenues in 2020 due to a lessening of demand in air travel as a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus. Airlines stand to lose in thevicinity of $29 billion.
According to Routesonline, Aeroflot is the only Russian carrier to not cancel flights to China, but instead is reducing its schedule. It has suspended one of its two daily flights to Beijing and Shanghai respectively. Its routes from Moscow to Guangzhou and Hong Kong remain in operation, but with a schedule reduced from once-a-day to four times a week.
It has, however, entirely suspended routes between cities in the Russian Far East and South Korea. Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk are affected by these suspensions to Seoul and Busan.