Air France-KLM Expects Challenging First Quarter 2021

Air France – KLM on Thursday said it expects a challenging first quarter 2021, following its losses from the fourth quarter of 2020, due to the lockdown and travel restrictions still in place due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

“2020 tested the Air France-KLM Group with the most severe crisis ever experienced by the air transport industry,” said Air France-KLM Group CEO Benjamin Smith.

The airline company posted a net income loss of 1 billion euros for the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to a net profit of 155 million euros for the same period in 2019 while its operating result also showed a loss of 1.13 billion euros in Q4 2020.

Revenue fell 64.3 percent to 2.36 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The Group expects Q1 2021 EBITDA to be lower than the losses of 407 million euros in the fourth quarter of 2020.

For the whole year of 2020, Air France-KLM posted a net income loss of 7.1 billion euros.

Photo source: Air France

The company expects to fly at 40 percent capacity in this year’s first quarter, compared to 2019, due to the negative environment for air travel. The Group sees progressively ramping up capacity towards summer 2021 and expects recovery in the second and third quarter 2021 thanks to the vaccine deployment.

“We begin 2021 looking forward that this year will see an upturn in traffic as soon as vaccination is deployed on a large scale and borders once again reopen,” Group’s CEO said.

Air France-KLM last year received 10.4 billion euros in loans and guarantees from France (7 billion euros) and the Netherlands (3.4 billion euros) to withstand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.