Airline Cityjet booked an exceptional gain of €163 million from its 2020 examinership. New accounts for the business in 2021 and 2020 show Cityjet DAC last year recorded a pretax profit of €408,000. This followed a pretax profit of €133.5 million in 2020 due to the €163 million gain from examinership. The gain included a write-off of loans of €126 million to connected parties, while trade creditors received a dividend of 1.25 per cent resulting in a gain of €18 million for the company. Another €11.4 million was written off from subsidiaries liquidated as part of the examinership.
The company last year recorded an operating loss of €5.09 million, with the pretax profit of €408,000 chiefly arising from an exceptional gain of €5.5 million from successful insurance claims and progress made in negotiations relating to pre-examinership liabilities.
The new accounts show that Cityjet last year recorded revenues of €71.6 million, following revenues of €88 million in 2020. The company’s directors note that revenues last year declined by 19 per cent due to the impact of Covid-19 on European travel.
Pre-Covid, Cityjet recorded revenues of €230.65 million in 2019 and employed 1,211. At the end of last year, a slimmed-down CityJet, post-examinership, employed 451. Today, it operates a fleet of 22 CRJ900 aircraft, the majority under a wet lease contract (where an aircraft and crew are supplied to a customer airline) for SAS Scandinavian Airlines, with aircraft and crews based in Copenhagen and Stockholm. The airline’s administration base is at Dublin Airport.
Since 2018, Cityjet flights have all been operated on behalf of customer airlines; it does not fly scheduled flights under its own brand.
Last year, the bulk of Cityjet’s revenues were recorded in Sweden, with only €248,000 generated in Ireland. This compared to Irish revenues of €3.28 million in 2020. Restructuring under the heading of staff costs in 2020 totalled €7.63 million. Staff costs last year totalled €25.2 million. The company last year received Government pandemic wage subsidy support payments of €4.15 million, with this following €2.7 million in 2020 Covid-19 wage payments in 2020.
The airline’s other major costs last year were aircraft rental charges of €17.4 million and aircraft maintenance, materials and repair costs of €21.66 million. At the end of December last, the firm had a shareholders’ deficit of €21.56 million. Cash funds totalled €21.9 million.
