MAURITIUS: Air Mauritius Making Profits

From a loss of nearly 24 million Euros for the financial year 2014/15 has Air Mauritius now emerged profitable again after ending their 2015/16 financial year with a healthy surplus of nearly 15.5 million Euros. This represents a swing of fortunes over the past year of just under 50 million, to a large part influenced by the significantly lower cost of fuel.

Sources from Mauritius however were swift to point out that the profit should perhaps have been three times as much, dragged down by fuel hedging into the wrong direction and the change of exchange rates between the US Dollar and the Euro, the currency in which Air Mauritius expresses its financial data.

Cost cutting measure also contributed to the black figures on the bottom line and will continue to make an impact in the current financial year.

Passenger numbers are said to have risen by 9.4 percent, three times as much as the capacity increase provided over the past year, and driven mainly by the Chinese market towards which the airline shifted much focus last year.

Now operating already flights to four Chinese destinations, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Chengdu will Air Mauritius launch flights to Guangzhou next month.

Equally successful proved the flights to Singapore and on to Kuala Lumpur, as Mauritius aims to establish itself as a convenient springboard for traffic from Asia to Africa where Dar es Salaam, as reported here at the time, was added to the network a few weeks ago, as was Maputo.