Air France-KLM moved out of the red in the first quarter of its financial year.
The group returned a net profit of 736 million euros for the three months to June, against a loss of 426 million euros a year earlier at the height of the global recession.
A break-even operating performance was forecast for the current fiscal year to March 2011, excluding the impact of flight chaos caused by the Icelandic volcanic dust cloud in April.
Sales rose 10.7% to 5.72 billion euros in the quarter. The disruption of flights in April masked a pick-up in passenger numbers, which rose by more than four per cent in May and June alone but were down 2.3% for the quarter as a whole.
Air France-KLM said it had an operating loss of 132 million euros in the three months, an improvement over a loss of 496 million euros for the same period a year earlier.
The company made an operating profit of 28 million euros in the period if the loss of flights in April were excluded.
Click here to view original article by Phil Davies, Travolution, Wednesday 28th July, 2010
