Transat’s fiscal Q3 yields 99% decline in revenue

Canada’s Transat, the parent company of leisure carrier Air Transat, posted revenues of just C$9.5m in its third fiscal quarter. During that period, it had just a single week of operations due to business interruptions from the coronavirus pandemic. That represents a 99% decline in revenue from the same period a year ago, the vacation specialist said Thursday. Transat shut down on 1 April after the government of Canada imposed numerous measures to attempt to contain the virus, including lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders that resulted in a sharp decline in passenger demand. Transat did not resume a partial schedule until 23 July, just nine days before the end of the company’s fiscal third quarter. “The reduction of operations to just one week for this quarter is unprecedented for Transat and for the industry as a whole,” Transat’s president and CE Jean-Marc Eustache says. The carrier says its net loss for the quarter was C$140m. And it says the future is still so uncertain that it will not venture a guess as to how business will fare going forward. “In the current situation, it is impossible for the moment to predict the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on future bookings, the partial resumption of flight operations and financial results,” Transat says. “Consequently, for now the corporation is not providing an outlook for summer 2020 or winter 2021. It’s now very clear that [the coronavirus’] effects are going to be long-lasting ones.” <br/>