Manila: Philippine Airlines' parent firm said Wednesday it suffered a net loss of $205.15 million in the nine months to December, bigger than its loss for the whole of the previous fiscal year.
PAL Holdings cited higher charges and maintenance costs and lower passenger traffic for the net loss of 9.116 billion pesos for the nine months to December 2013. This topped the total net loss of 5.755 billion pesos for the 12 months to March 2013, it said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange. The company did not provide comparative figures for April-December 2012. PAL said it carried 5.0 million passengers between April and December 2013, contributing 81.1 percent of total revenues for the period. This compared with 7.6 million passengers for the 12-month period to March 2013.
PAL and its local rivals received a boost last week when the US Federal Aviation Administration removed the Philippines from its air safety blacklist. This opened the door for Filipino carriers to expand services to the United States.
