Amadeus swings back to profit as air travel recovers

The world’s biggest travel reservations company Amadeus said Friday it had swung back to profit during the first quarter of 2022 as air travel resumed after Covid-19 travel restrictions were mostly lifted.

The Spanish firm recorded an adjusted net profit of 81.3 million euros ($85.4 million) during the first three months of the year compared to a loss of 95.3 million euros in the same year-ago period.

The result was better than expected by analysts from financial data firm Factset, who forecast a profit of 68 million euros.

Chief executive Luis Maroto said it was the company’s “best quarterly since the start of the pandemic” in 2020.

“The slower start to the year due to the Omicron variant was offset by solid performances across all our segments during the rest of the quarter,” he added in a statement.

Amadeus, whose main service is a plane ticketing reservation platform for travel agencies, said it processed nearly 92 million bookings during the quarter, a little more than half the pre-pandemic levels.

The aviation sector was ravaged by the Covid crisis that erupted in early 2020, decimating demand and grounding planes worldwide.

The International Air Transport Association, the industry’s main trade body, predicts 3.4 billion people will board a plane in 2022, up from 2.3 billion last year.

In 2019 before the pandemic, 4.5 billion people boarded a plane.