airberlin: another record loss, but "Jack of all trades" may have a chance to escape Groundhog Day

The German airline airberlin made another record loss in 2016 and has reported net losses in eight of the past nine years. It has lost a cumulative EUR1.9 billion in the five years since Etihad became a shareholder. The only small net profit, in 2012, was because Etihad bought its loyalty scheme. The first results for this year show that losses worsened in 1Q2017.

The better news is that, with shareholder Etihad's support, airberlin has sufficient liquidity to continue, and it has a restructuring plan with a new CEO. If the story of losses, Etihad support, restructuring and a new CEO sounds familiar, it is because it is. Airberlin has been through this almost as many times as Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day.

Crucially, though, the latest restructuring does seem genuinely radical. As new CEO Thomas Winkelmann has said, airberlin used to be a "Jack of all trades", but master of none. Past restructurings made it a Jack of fewer trades, but never fully resolved this lack of focus. The current plan brings it focus as a network airline - scaling down, and largely exiting from leisure. There is still much execution to be done, and competitive conditions are unlikely to ameliorate, but Mr Winkelmann may have a better chance than his predecessors.