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Blue Air registered last year a "pandemic loss" of over 60 million Euro, while in 2019 it saw 11 million Euro in profit, declared, for AGERPRES, Oana Petrescu, the CEO of the Romanian private flight operator.
"Basically, our pandemic loss was over 60 million Euro, just as we foresaw when we made the credit request towards the state. A year prior we became profitable, we managed to reach a profit of 11 million Euro, and in 2020 we had to cover all losses from our accelerated expansion. Unfortunately, the pandemic set us back two years, but we are certain that we will recover," Oana Petrescu said.
Regarding projections for 2021, the head of Blue Air mentioned that they depend on the way the market is evolving, because initial estimates were not in concordance with reality.
"It depends a lot on how the market evolves. (...) Now, reality has shown us that because of the third wave of the pandemic we are flying at a level of 15% (from 2019, ed. n). Under these circumstances we are unable to make any predictions, all depends on how quickly the vaccination campaign is going, by how quickly the restrictions are being lifted and how quickly traffic will resume. But we are expecting that when the restrictions are lifted we will have a very high demand, and we are ready," Oana Petrescu said.
According to her, in 2019 the company reached 900 flights per week and had over 25,000 passengers, and now only operates at 100-150 flights.
