Air Arabia third quarter net profit rises 26 percent

Budget carrier Air Arabia, the United Arab Emirates' only publicly-listed airline, reported a 26 percent rise in third-quarter net profit on Sunday. The Sharjah-based firm made a net profit of 297 million dirhams ($80.9 million) in the three months to September 30, the company said in a statement. This compares with a profit of 235 million dirhams in the corresponding period of 2015.
EFG Hermes and SICO Bahrain had forecast the airline would make a third-quarter profit of 294.5 million dirhams and 209.4 million dirhams respectively.
Air Arabia, which had reported declining profits in four of the preceding five quarters, carried more than 2.27 million passengers in the third quarter of 2016, an increase of 14 percent year on year. The airline's third-quarter revenue was 1.12 billion dirhams, "in line" with the revenue generated in the same period a year earlier, it said without elaborating.