On May 31, the Council of Ministers approved a participatory loan worth 111 million euros to the Valencian company Air Nostrum, public aid charged to the Solvency Support Fund for Strategic Companies.
A week later, its president, Carlos Bertomeu, explained at the company’s headquarters in Quart de Poblet that long and exhaustive process (one year and two months) that has led the company to literally gut itself to detail its viability plan, in which that have had the endorsement of third parties such as the Ivie or the aviation consultant Flare. “The crisis has been really savage for transport in general,” explained Bertomeu, who has recognized that what the pandemic took ahead “no one can digest.”
I was looking at the graph that shows the impact of Covid-19 on world aviation and the peak left by the pandemic is certainly abysmal. “After the Twin Towers we believed that this was a super crisis because we grew nothing and flattened ourselves, and in the 2008 crisis the graph also flattened, but it recovered. I thought that this was a crisis like I was not going to see another like it and suddenly this came, in which 2,500 million passengers are lost, ”he summarized.
Bertomeu has explained how many months were unemployed, escaping the costs. Air Nostrum flights fell by 60%, the number of passengers by 65% ??and sales by 50%, which translated into millions of euros meant going from selling for a value of 549 euros in 2019 to billing only 273 million in the year 2020.
At the meeting, Bertomeu also detailed the results of the company in 2021, audited, but still pending approval by the Board of Directors. “The results are not what one wants to have, but reducing losses is very important,” he acknowledged.
The balance leaves a strong reduction in losses in 2021, of 95% compared to the previous year, 2020. Sales grew by 26% despite the fact that the year, the businessman acknowledged, had four especially complicated months: “From January to May we were the ones with the highest number of operations in Spain and although we have increased sales, we have had losses, but less, only -7.3%”, detailed Bertomeu.
He also boasted that the company is recovering “solidly, faster and in a better percentage than the industry average” and attributed this to the viability of the company once Covid-19 has passed. Likewise, he has affirmed that “it is a pride as a company to present these results” and that a year has passed -what the process has lasted- “concerned about the viability, without it we could not continue”.
The contracted loan is managed by the State Society for Industrial Participations (SEPI) and the company must repay it in seven years, with an interest rate that varies between 3.5% and 7% over the same period.
It affects the parent holding company Air Investment Valencia S.L., and its subsidiaries Air Nostrum Líneas Aéreas Del Mediterráneo S.A.U., Air Nostrum Engineering And Maintenance Operations S.L.U., Air Nostrum Global Services S.L.U., Ara Gestión De Tripulaciones y Vuelo, S.L.U. and Air Nostrum Training Operations, S.L.U.
Although Air Nostrum initially requested 103 million, finally the amount is 111 million euros, an increase that Bertomeu indicated is due to the economic situation due to the energy crisis that, although not like other companies, also disrupts the company’s plans.
Air Nostrum ensures that it maintains a stable financial risk coverage policy, including variations in the price of aviation kerosene that allow it to smooth out these sharp price increases.
