With British Airways in crisis, its parent company faces an uphill battle to restore its tarnished reputation after years of falling popularity.
The flag carrier’s owner, International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG), will on Friday report results for the first three months of the year.
The update comes as Covid absences and staff shortages wreak havoc on airlines, leading to mass cancellations of flights. BA has been hit particularly hard and cancelled more than 1,500 flights in April.
Its boss Sean Doyle last week met Transport Secretary Grant Shapps and revealed BA was ‘pro-actively’ axing even more flights ahead of summer.
Shares are languishing around two-thirds below where they were before Covid ground the business to a halt. They closed the week at 143.96p per share, a long way short of 480p highs of 2018.
Analysts wonder how much the travel chaos will have hit sales and profits, and will be looking for indications of when it will return to profits.
They expect the airline, which also owns Aer Lingus and Iberia, to report a loss of £423m for the first three months.
Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Sophie Lund-Yates said: ‘Profits had been expected to make an arrival in the second quarter, and hopefully that’s still the case.
‘Summer months are crucial for airlines, and that’s especially the case for IAG, which has been especially punished by the pandemic thanks to its long-haul focus. All eyes will be on the outlook statement.’
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