African low-cost carrier Fastjet has reported losses of $48 million in 2016.
The airline’s losses more than doubled on the previous year, went it reported a deficit of $21.9 million.
But revenue in 2016 rose from $65.1 million to $68.5 million at the business, in which EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji Ioannou holds a significant stake.
The full-year results were announced just months after the airline made three senior appointments including Nico Bezuidenhout as chief executive in a bid to turn its fortunes around.
Its results showed that Fastjet has also had a $28 million investment from aircraft leasing firm Solenta in return for a 28% stake.
“2016 was a challenging year, and these financial results reflect not only a difficult market place but also the overly optimistic expansion plan adopted in early 2015,” said Bezuidenhout.
“Since I became CEO on August 1, 2016 we have successfully initiated a stabilisation plan to address the immediate challenges. However, although good progress has been made many of the plan’s benefits to reduce our cost base, and match capacity with demand, have naturally taken time to feed through and as such will only be materially realised in 2017,” he added.
Bezuidenhout said that between July and December capacity was reduced by 25%, passenger numbers were down by 3% and revenues rose by 5%.