Pre-tax losses at leading US fractional-ownership operator NetJets totalled about $80 million last year, compared with income of $10 million in 2004. “I said last year that this business would earn money in 2005 – I was dead wrong,” investor Warren Buffet, chief executive of owner Berkshire Hathaway, says in a letter to shareholders. Losses were caused primarily by the $85 million cost of chartering aircraft to overcome “unusually high” shortages of available aircraft because increases in owner demand outpaced capacity. NetJets also recorded a $20 million charge related to a new contract with its pilots and flight attendants.
Source: Flight International