SAS reports 1st quarterly pretax profit since 2019

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) on Friday reported its first quarterly profit since 2019, marking a significant turnaround from its filing for bankruptcy protection in July 2022, reported Xinhua.

SAS reported a pretax profit of 457 million Swedish kronor (42 million U.S. dollars) for its fiscal third quarter (Q3) from May to July, with the total operating revenue up 54 percent year-on-year to nearly 13.2 billion kronor, it said in a press release.

These positive figures stand in contrast to the same period last year when the airline incurred a loss of 1.99 billion Swedish kronor. Following the quarterly report, share prices of SAS rose 14 percent to 0.42 kronor.

The improvement was partly attributed to the 36.8-percent year-on-year increase in Q3 passengers, totaling nearly 7 million, the highest quarterly number since before the COVID-19 pandemic, SAS said, adding that the occupancy rate also increased by 3.7 percentage points year-on-year to 81.5 percent during the period.

"This is an important milestone. We still have a lot of work ahead of us with our transformation to secure long-term competitiveness, but I consider this a clear sign that we are on the right track and that our efforts are paying off," said the airline's president and CEO Anko van der Werff.

In February last year, the airline launched a business transformation plan aimed at securing long-term competitiveness, and later it filed for Chapter 11 in the United States to, among other measures, restructure its debt obligations.