Adria flies into profit despite fuel prices

Despite gloomy predictions earlier in the year with announcements that Slovenia’s national carrier, Adria Airways was in a financial crisis, the airline managed, in the first 8 months to improve its profit by 20% compared to last year. This was achieved by cutting costs in other sectors in order to allocate expenditure for rising fuel prices which has destabilised the aviation industry. This way Adria managed to bring its operating profit to just over 1 million Euros. In total, without including any expenditure the airline would have achieved a profit of 21 million Euros. Adria’s management was less optimistic a few months ago when it predicted it would finish the year with a loss. Now the management believes the airline will just manage to make a profit by the end of December 2008.

The positive financial result comes as the airline transported 907.761 passengers in the first 8 months of the year. Adria is hoping for good financial results as next year expenditure will rise with the airline forced to redirect some of its flights from Ljubljana to Maribor due to an airport construction project which means Adria will have to provide free transportation between the two cities.