Virgin Australia posts 75 mln USD half-year loss

Virgin Australia, the country's second largest carrier, reported on Friday a statutory loss after tax of 83.7 million AU dollars (75 million U.S. dollars) for the first half of the 2014 financial year.

The company said the result for the six months ended December 31, 2013 was impacted by the challenging trading and competitive environment, ongoing subdued consumer sentiment and economic uncertainty, the effect of strong market capacity growth and an unrecovered 27 million AU dollar (24.2 million U.S. dollar) cost of the carbon tax.

Virgin Australia chief executive John Borghetti said the Australian aviation market continued to be impacted by significant capacity growth which occurred during the 2013 financial year.

However, he said Virgin had increased its proportion of domestic revenue from the corporate and government market segment and outperformed its main competitor Qantas on the key measures of growth in total group revenue, domestic yield, international yield and group revenue load factor.

"Our business efficiency program continues to progress towards the target of 400 million AU dollars (358.5 million U.S. dollars) in cumulative productivity gains for financial year 2015," Borghetti said in a statement.