25 July 2006
Austrian: Qualitative growth and high service quality key factors in successful improvement of result

Financial result of the Austrian Airlines Group (January to June 2006)

Commenting on the Austrian Airlines Group’s results for the first half-year of 2006, Alfred Otsch, Chief Executive Officer of the Board of Management of the Austrian Airlines Group, made the following statement: ‘The continued expansion of our market leadership in Eastern Europe in the first half-year has enabled us to achieve respectable, usually double-digit, levels of traffic growth, build market share gains and generate over 70% of the passenger growth at Vienna Airport. We have improved our adjusted EBIT by EUR 16.3m to EUR –47.8m compared to last year, despite having had to overcome an increase in kerosene expenditure of EUR 72 million. Had kerosene prices remained at last year’s level, we would actually have seen a substantial improvement in our result. As the second half of 2006 is likely to be dominated by factors including continued high kerosene prices that exceed our budgetary assumptions (already set high as a precautionary measure) and because of the negative consequences of the capacity bottlenecks that have emerged at Austrian air traffic control since spring, it has become necessary to correct our forecast result for the year as a whole. It will probably not be possible to achieve a balanced adjusted EBIT. Depending on the political and economic framework conditions, the annual result will prospectively be better than the previous year.’

Half-Yearly Result — Summary