Full year revenue results announced (18/05/2007)

British Airways World Cargo has reported commercial revenues (flown revenues plus fuel surcharges) of £618m million for the full year, a decrease of 3.1 per cent against the same period last year. After the impact of exchange rate movements was removed, commercial revenues were down by 0.5 per cent.

Overall yields (revenue per cargo tonne kilometre (CTK)), were up by 4.6 per cent excluding exchange effects. Volumes fell by 4.7 per cent compared to the same period last year, to 4.7 million CTKs. Capacity measured in available cargo tonne kilometres (ATKs) decreased by 0.5 per cent compared to last year.

Sean Doyle, financial controller, comments: "This has been a challenging year for the business. Operational difficulties including security disruptions over the summer and fog in December, combined with soft market conditions, particularly out of the UK, Japan and Europe, have certainly had an impact on these results. However, in spite of difficult circumstances we have succeeded in growing our yield through optimising our product and destination mix.

"From a regional perspective, demand out of the Americas and Greater China has held up well and traffic remains strong from the Middle East. Higher yielding areas such as Asia Pacific have also delivered a steady, if unspectacular, performance."

Chris Bosworth, general manager commercial development adds: "During the last financial year we channelled significant investment into our products, facilities and network. The development of our premium offering has enabled us to grow yield over what has been a testing 12 months and the expansion of our shorthaul freighter programme earlier this year has been very well received.

"Going forward, we will continue to service the existing demand for premium products and work closely with our customers to ensure that we deliver a world class service, backed up by the unparalleled reach of our network."