CEO: Estonian Air to become profitable again in September

Photo: Liis Treimann / Postimees

Estonian Air's flight operations, the airline's core business activity, swung into profit already in May and the whole company will be profitable probably in September, CEO Jan Palmer told Postimees in an interview.

«If you cut the company in two, on the one side there's core activity or flying. With that were came into positive territory in May. We were close to zero also in March and in April, but May was better still,» Palmer said according to remarks published in Estonian. «Besides some restructuring expenses remain up that will disappear with time. When these are gone we will be able to show much better figures. The whole company thus was narrowly in negative territory in May.»

In September the whole company probably will be profitable. «And it will maintain that course -- I see the whole year profitable in 2014,» Palmer said.

He said that in 2015 Estonian Air will be in such shape that the government would be able to sell it if it so wishes. «By that time there will have been more or less two clean years and we will be able to show that the company works,» the CEO said. «Then we'll be able to decide what planes we will be using and we will have made ourselves known on the market as well.»

Palmer said the reductions being carried out at the company were about to be completed soon. «The redundant aircraft will go soon. Saab 340 now and Boeing 737 in a few weeks' time. The personnel for whom no use could be found have left,» he said.

The airline has reduced its employee numbers by half, from 337 in 2012 to 164 a few weeks from now. In its network of routes nine principal destinations plus Trondheim remain.

While Estonian Air wants to work closely with Lufthansa to start flying to Berlin in the future, things are not going exactly its way with that, according to Palmer. «When we discussed the matter with them the company was not in a very good shape -- newspapers were writing negative things about us and Lufthansa would not engage in cooperation with a company like that.» Besides the Germans may be waiting for the European Commission to pass a decision as regards Estonian Air.

In addition to working together with Lufthansa a second opportunity to open new routes would be to provide feed to some major airline. «Big companies use big planes and they need companies with smaller planes to operate regional flights,» he said.

Palmer said he expects Estonian Air to open some new routes too in the coming two years.