Air Canada reported an operating loss of $3.776 billion in 2020 compared to operating income of $1.650 billion in 2019. Unrestricted liquidity amounted to $8.013 billion at December 31, 2020.
“With immediately’s launch of 2020 fourth quarter and full 12 months outcomes, we shut the ebook on the bleakest 12 months within the historical past of economic aviation, after having reported a number of years of document outcomes and document development at Air Canada. The catastrophic influence of COVID-19 and government-imposed journey restrictions and quarantines has been felt throughout our total community, deeply affecting all of our stakeholders. It has resulted in a 73 p.c decline in passengers carried at Air Canada in the course of the 12 months and an working lack of practically $3.8 billion. But, regardless of a year-long onslaught of unhealthy information, uncertainty and challenges posed by continuously altering necessities, our workers valiantly served our remaining prospects professionally and transported them safely to their locations, operated tons of of repatriation flights and our Cargo group transported important Private Protecting Tools to Canada and world wide. I commend them for his or her braveness in addition to for his or her tireless efforts in these exceptionally making an attempt circumstances to place our firm properly for after we emerge from the pandemic,” stated Calin Rovinescu, President and Chief Govt Officer of Air Canada.
“As we transfer into 2021, whereas uncertainty stays because of the brand new variants of the virus and altering journey restrictions, the promise of recent testing capabilities and vaccines is encouraging and presents some mild on the finish of the tunnel. As our success elevating vital liquidity all through 2020 signifies, buyers and monetary markets share our optimistic long-term outlook for our airline. I’m additionally very inspired by the constructive nature of discussions that we have now had with the Authorities of Canada on sector-specific monetary assist over the past a number of weeks. Whereas there is no such thing as a assurance at this stage that we’ll arrive at a definitive settlement on sector assist, I’m extra optimistic on this entrance for the primary time.
“Given these circumstances, we have now made many painful choices over the previous 12 months. These embody lowering employees by greater than 20,000, dismantling a world community ten years within the making, suspending service to many communities and aggressively chopping mounted prices. On the similar time, we have now bolstered our liquidity place via a number of debt and fairness financings to permit for added operational flexibility and to assist the implementation of our COVID-19 Mitigation and Restoration Plan. We rationalized our fleet, accelerating the everlasting removing of older, much less environment friendly plane, and restructured new plane orders so that we’ll have a extra fuel-efficient and greener fleet that’s right-sized for the post-COVID-19 restoration interval. As well as, we accomplished important customer-oriented initiatives, corresponding to rolling out our new reservation system and delivering on a much-improved Aeroplan loyalty program that shall be amongst the business leaders. Our Cargo group delivered stellar ends in 2020 and confirmed that we will construct a powerful, devoted cargo fleet going ahead,” stated Mr. Rovinescu.
