Iberia, the Spain based airline owned by International Airlines Group (IAG), will be cutting down its routes, as part of a transformation plan to stay focused on its profitable operations.
The airline will be terminating its services to Athens, Istanbul and Cairo from mid-January, 2013; and long-haul services to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and Havana in Cuba, from April 1, 2012.
In a statement, the airline chief executive officer, Rafael Sanchez-Lozano, said, ‘Iberia has announced a Transformation Plan intended chiefly to restore profitability, ensure our future, and to transform us into an airline that is prepared to meet the challenges being faced by the industry, and, most importantly, to meet the expectations of our customers.
Our Transformation Plan is, above all, a project oriented towards the future, and it includes major investments to improve our fleet and our offer to the customer. The plan calls for a thorough review of our network to focus on routes that are strategic and that otherwise generate value, a new commercial strategy, and a change in our operations of short and medium-haul flights, all of which will make Iberia more competitive, and more attractive to current and future shareholders, ensuring a future for our employees, and anticipating customers’ needs.’
The airline is planning to increase its services to destinations in Brazil, Mexico, US, Central America, Chile and Ecuador; and will be increasing seats on services to London, Casablanca, Algiers, Dakar, Nouakchott and Malabo.
The airline has lost €262 million in the first nine months of 2012, and total losses of around €1,000 million in the last five years. The transformation plan aims to sort out the structural problems of the airline, and is exceed to be completed by 2015.
