Croatia Airlines

Croatia Airlines eyes return to profitability following fleet and network adjustments

Croatia Airlines is confident it can return to profitability in 2012 after significantly narrowing its losses this year despite high fuel prices. The Croatian flag carrier is banking that its future fleet plan, which focusses on replacing three A320s with four A319s, will result in further improvements in profitability as it will be able to better match capacity with demand. New routes to the east are also planned – including Moscow, St Petersburg and Sofia – to balance a network that is now primarily focussed on Western Europe.

Croatia Airlines, which launched services in 1991 just as Croatia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia, has incurred losses every year since posting a breakeven result in 2007. Croatia Airlines CEO Srećko Šimunović expects the carrier to end 2011 with a loss of EUR9 million (USD12 million).

Air China tops airline Enterprise Value rankings; Delta second; no LCCs in top 10

It would appear China has already reached its aim of creating a world-beating "super carrier" – at least in terms of financial size. Air China is by far the world’s biggest airline, based on a current ranking of listed airlines’ Enterprise Values (EV) assembled by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA).

So you think you know your airline market capitalisation: Part 3

The first part of this three-part report on airline market capitalisations described how Air China is valued more on the stock exchange than US carriers United-Continental, JetBlue, Hawaiian Air, AirTran, US Airways, American Airlines, Republic Airways and Skywest combined. In this final section, CAPA reviews some further interesting facts from the equity investment world.

European airlines report single-digit traffic growth in 2010; profits remain weak

European airlines reported single-digit growth last year - a welcome improvement from 2009's depressed level - but 2010 was a lacklustre year overall. Full year data has been released by the Association of European Airlines (AEA), the European Low Fares Airline Association (ELFAA) and EUROCONTROL. As noted by EUROCONTROL, growth across the continent last year was driven mainly by LCCs.