Jet Airways said it has suffered a net loss of 21 billion rupees in the financial year ending in March, which is about half of the loss they bore last year. The airline reportedly has not made an annual profit since 2007, due to tough competition and high operating costs in India's aviation industry making it hard for them to turn a profit. The company has announced a cost-cutting plan and said it expects to make a full year profit in 2017.
"FY15 was an encouraging year when we set out to change the fundamentals of this business, allowing us to deliver a significant improvement in our net result," chairman Naresh Goyal said. He also said that India's aviation market still suffered from "structural challenges and robust competition" that were pressuring yields.
Rival SpiceJet reported its first quarterly profit since mid-2013, thanks largely to one-off gains from renegotiating contracts and an insurance claim.
Delhi-based aviation consultancy CAPA said this week the ticket prices at which airlines could break even were still discouraging many Indians from flying, and so carriers continued to charge fares that lost them money. "We are disappointed that the benefits of the lower oil price have been lost by the below cost fares, or very low fares, charged by the airlines," the consultancy's CEO Kapil Kaul said.
