Air France-KLM Cargo showed a full-year loss for 2016 and is still struggling to keep its cargo product alive, according to trade media.
The management is still trying to appease shareholders with statements that the airline is striving to continue its (cargo) restructuring programme in order to make a turnaround.
But the overall loss for the year amounted to -244 million euros on actual revenues of just under 2 billion euros.
It also reported a 4th quarter loss of -28 million euros (20% greater than the same quarter in 2015) at a time when other airlines were tending to report better cargo revenues and bottom line figures for that period.
For the year, tonnages dropped by 6.2%; capacity on offer also went down by -4.6%; the already low average load factor of 60.4% in 2015 (60.4%) took a further 1.1% drop to 59.3%; and the unit revenue per available tonne kilometre (ATK) for 2016 dropped to 13.4 euro cents, down almost 12% from 15.2 euro cents in 2015.
Press reports pointed to cargo capacity having faced drastic cuts during the past few years with the disposal of the Martinair cargo fleet and a serious pruning of the AF fleet, including a number of freighters in the cargo division.
Waning customer satisfaction, said commentators, raised the question of whether this was a good long-term cargo strategy.
