Although the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand reported that passengers in the second quarter were on a rising trend with 12.0-per-cent growth from same quarter last year, Thai Airways International, Nok Air and Bangkok Airways experienced net losses due to multiple factors.

The serial bombings last week are expected to bring turbulence to the airline and tourism industries this quarter.

THAI president Charamporn Jotikasthira said yesterday that the group suffered a quarterly operating loss of Bt1.78 billion, which was a 62.2-per-cent improvement from the same time last year.

Adding an impairment loss of assets and aircraft under the airline’s transformation plan of Bt2.30 billion and a gain on foreign exchange of Bt595 million brought the loss to a net Bt2.92 billion.

The national airline, however, showed positive performance for the first half year with a Bt5.39-billion profit compared with a loss of Bt297 million in the same half last year. The airline said the multiple factors of high competition, low-season traffic, terrorism in Europe and the emergence of low-cost airlines caused a 0.6-per-cent decrease in passengers while its cabin factor was 69 per cent, a slight drop from the same time last year.

The blasts last week at major tourist destinations did not ruffle its reservations much, but if there are more incidents, the airline may suffer a lot of cancellations.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand said 100,000-200,000 tourists had cancelled trips to Thailand after the attacks, wiping out Bt5 billion to Bt10 billion in revenue.

However, bookings for September 15 to December 31 were running 2 per cent ahead of the same period last year.

Nuanwan Bhuprasert, chief financial officer of Nok Airlines, the operator of low-cost carrier Nok Air, said the group lost Bt864.38 million in the second quarter, worse than the Bt458.00 million lost in the same quarter last year.

In the second quarter, Nok Air and its subsidiaries generated revenue of Bt3.91 billion.

The decline in revenue came mainly from the reduction of domestic flights to fit pilot capacity and a drop of 3.1 per cent in passengers.

Passenger yield declined 8.9 per cent, while the available seat kilometre (ASK) rate edged up by 1.0 per cent from the same quarter last year, as the company launched international routes and increased flight frequencies.

Puttipong Prasarttong-Osoth, president of Bangkok Airways, said last week that in the second quarter, revenue rose 8.8 per cent year on year to Bt6.05 billion by carrying more passengers.

Profit before tax was Bt491.7 million, but additional taxes of Bt447 million filed because of the change in the calculation for tax privileges granted by the Board of Investment caused the company to realise a net loss of Bt111.9 million.

The change in rules was announced by the Finance Ministry on June 16.

For the first half, revenue climbed by 12.5 per cent to Bt13.83 billion and net profit by 23 per cent to Bt1.46 billion.

Charamporn said THAI began using a new reservation system and network-management system this month.

It expects to see a difference in three months.

It also plans to increase revenue from its alliances with other airlines from 5 per cent currently to 20 per cent by next year.