NAIROBI: Kenya Airways Ltd’s pretax loss for the six months to September narrowed slightly to 11.856 billion shillings ($116.12 million), helped by lower fuel costs, Finance Director Alex Mbugua said on Thursday. The airline, part-owned by Air France KLM, reported a pretax loss of 12.5 billion shillings a year earlier.
A series of Islamist militant attacks in Kenya in the past two years has hurt the country’s tourism industry, which hit the airline’s revenue after it had bought expensive new planes.
“The fuel costs have come down significantly,” Mbugua told an investor briefing, although he said those savings were partly offset by a revaluation of the airline’s dollar denominated loans that led to foreign exchange losses.
The shillings has been weakening this year. Turnover was flat at 56.72 billion shillings, he said. Fuel costs fell 37.4 percent during the period to 13.58 billion shillings, the finance director said, adding the actual savings from price movement of oil was 7.95 billion shillings.
