05-Mar-2010 4:02 PM

Cimber Sterling and SAS climb; Lufthansa and Aeroflot slip

European airline shares were mostly up on Thursday (04-Mar-2010), as the recent rally in oil prices (-0.8%) came to an end, ending the day at USD80.21. European markets were meanwhile down on mixed data from the US, despite the European Central Bank and Bank of England keeping rates on hold.

In key markets, UK’s FTSE (-0.1%), France’s CAC (-0.3%) and Germany’s DAX (-0.3%) were all down marginally at the end of trading.

easyJet reports improved passenger numbers for Feb-2010

easyJet gained after passenger numbers rose 12.3% year-on-year in Feb-2010, to 3.4 million. However, the carrier reported a 1.7 ppt decline in load factor, to 85.3%. See related report: easyJet and Ryanair report load factor reductions in Feb-2010, but passenger numbers continue to rise

Ryanair shares down

Competitor, Ryanair (-1.8%) meanwhile announced plans during trading to open its 41st base at Malta in May-2010, with one based aircraft and 19 routes (six of which will be new). New routes include services from the airport to Billund, Bologna, Krakow, Marseille, Seville and Valencia.

Cimber Sterling and SAS climb

Cimber Sterling (+10.7%) and SAS (+4.7%) were meanwhile the biggest gainers of the day, despite a 0.9% decline in the OMX Copenhagen 20. The OMX Nordic and Stockholm indexes gained 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

Lufthansa (-0.8%) and Aeroflot (-0.7%) were also down. Lufthansa announced plans during trading to increase Frankfurt-Tunisia frequency from daily to ten times weekly this month.

Europe Airline Daily supplies the very latest on what’s happening in the European aviation industry. Other stories featured in today’s issue include:

Skyscanner reveals UK passenger flight trends for Feb-2010;
British Airways to feature airplane health management on its Boeing twin-aisle fleet;
Air Berlin pilots strike called off; Air Berlin to negotiate issues with Vereinigung Cockpit;
Lufthansa to increase Frankfurt-Tunisia frequency;
Air Slovakia ceases operations; third Slovakian carrier to cease operations in the past six months;
Transaero to launch Moscow-Beijing service.

Europe selected airlines daily share price movements (% change): 04-Mar-2010