[070418.EN.AIR] Air China Earns US$1.2b in 2017 Through Route Optimisation, Restructuring

AIR China Ltd has announced that profit attributable to shareholders rose by 6.39 per cent year on year in 2017 to CNY7.244 billion (US$ 1.1735 billion) on turnover of CNY124.026 billion, up 7.71 per cent for the full calendar year.

The group said in a statement that it has capitalised on market opportunities by prudently expanding its business scale, optimising efficiency, stabilising income level and strengthening cost management to reinforce its competitive advantage in the core business.

Air transport revenue was up 7.53 per cent year on year to CNY115.380 billion, with air cargo revenue up 23.48 per cent.

Last year capacity measured by available tonne kilometres (ATK) was 35.673 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 5.61 per cent. Traffic measured by revenue tonne kilometres (RTK) was 25.385 billion, up 7.12 per cent.

In 2017, Air China Cargo achieved positive operating results through exploring a new business model, optimising the arrangement of its routes and the structure of cargo sources, as well as focusing on the development and sale of high value-added services such as cold-chain logistics.

During the period, the available freight tonne kilometres (AFTK) of Air China Cargo increased 4.57 per cent to 13.319 billion, while the revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTK) increased by 7.97 per cent to 7.553 billion. The cargo and mail load factor increased by 1.78 percentage points to 56.7 per cent.

In 2017, the group introduced 56 aircraft, and phased out 11 aircraft. The total fleet size was 655 aircraft, with an average age of 6.53 years.

In light of the national development strategies including the Belt and Road Initiative and the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, 49 domestic routes such as Beijing-Maotai and 12 international and regional routes such as Beijing-Astana were newly launched in 2017.

As of December 31 2017, the company's air passenger routes reached 420, including 303mainland routes, 101 international routes, 16 regional routes, 40 countries and 185 cities, among which 116 are mainland cities, 66 international cities and three regional cities.

Source : HKSG.