British Airways’ parent loses $8.3B

The parent company of British Airways and Iberia on Friday said it lost 6.9 billion euros, or $8.3 billion, last year as the pandemic caused a near-total collapse in international air traffic, and it called for digital passes to help revive travel.

IAG’s after-tax loss compared with a profit of 1.7 billion euros the year before. Its revenue slumped 70 percent to 7.8 billion euros, or $9.4 billion.

“Our results reflect the serious impact that COVID-19 has had on our business,” CEO Luis Gallego said.

The outlook is so uncertain that the company did not provide any targets or estimates for 2021. At the start of this year, business remained precarious as many countries extended or introduced new lockdown measures on travel and business.

Passenger capacity at IAG’s airlines in 2020 was 33 percent of what it was the previous year. In the current quarter, it is estimated at just 20 percent of what it was in the same period of 2019.