Dubai – Mubasher: Ghaith Al Ghaith, CEO of Flydubai, forecast that the Dubai carrier would turn a profit in 2019.
In 2018, the company posted net losses of $43.5 million due to increasing fuel costs, rising interest rates, and unfavourable currency exchange movements.
“You cannot ignore that the fuel prices were going up, so we as an airline introduce things like fuel surcharges to cover the fuel to cover costs and I think that definitely helped improve the yield,” Al Ghaith told local radio station Dubai Eye.
He added that the low-cost airline’s fuel bill has gone up by about AED 400 million year-on-year.
“We could not recover all of it in the price adjustment that we had to because unfortunately in our business the ticket is sold ahead of time and usually the market does not respond quickly enough to the adjustment in fuel price increases,” the CEO pointed out.
During the second half of 2018,Flydubai worked on improving its financial performance, as it focused on further efficiency programmes across the business.
The airline’s increased revenues in 2018 were attributed to launching new routes and the company’s continuous effort to improve its yield price.
“We are very confident in 2019, based on what we have seen so far, as far as the fuel prices are concerned, if it continues to be the same, I think we will be alright, [and] we will be successfully making a profit this year,” Al Ghaith concluded.
