Air France's $83.3m operating profit was its first since 1989.
Passenger yields fell 6.5%, partly due to the strength of the French franc, and strikes cost $60m in lost revenue. The carrier made $402m of provisions for restructuring.
Part of Finnair's growth was due to the 12% appreciation of the Finnish markka. Pretax profit rose 27% in markka. Unit costs fell 4.9% despite a 16% rise in fuel costs in the fourth quarter.
KLM's record net was 16% higher than its 1994/5 net in Dutch guilders. Operating income fell 41% to $282.8m due to the strong guilder and a resumption of pension payments. KLM gained $161m by revaluing its Northwest preference shares.
Lufthansa's cargo subsidiary made a small profit in its first year as revenue tonne km grew 9.8% to 6,235m. But in the first quarter of 1996 revenue fell 2.8% and traffic was flat.
The Delta Connection carrier took a $6.2m pretax charge as it removed the Metros from its fleet. Load factors fell 1.8 points and yield fell 8.5%.
Profits improved at the Irish Airport Authority as traffic rose 13% to 10.6m passengers.
Although movements at Paris' airports rose 5.7%, passenger numbers fell 0.5% to 55.1m.
Profits rose 25% as Schiphol handled 25.4m passengers and 977,500 tonnes of freight.
Passenger traffic at BAA's airports rose 6.7% to 93.6m and retail revenue rose 10.5% to $870m.
Copenhagen's passenger traffic rose 7% to 15m. Revenues rose 15.7% in Danish krone; the rest of the dollar increase was due to the weaker dollar.
Milan's Linate and Malpensa airports enjoyed passenger traffic growth of 6.6% to 14.7m.
Passenger numbers rose 10.6% to 8.5m. Aviation turnover rose 15.9% and non-aviation sales 7.9%.
Source: Airline Business
