Royal Jordanian (RJ, Amman Queen Alia) has secured a comfort letter from the Jordanian Ministry of Finance wherein it has pledged to support the airline given the losses it has incurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a 1Q20 stock market filing, the carrier said only that a committee has been formed comprising representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport, the Jordanian Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CARC), the Central Bank of Jordan, and the national Social Security Fund to go through the airline's proposed required support, which may come in the form of direct financing, loans, or loan guarantees and tax reliefs.

Majority-owned by the government, Royal Jordanian posted an overall loss of JOD25.466 million dinars (USD35.96 million) for the quarter as the COVID-19 crisis pushed revenue down 21% to JOD113 million (USD160 million) while costs were only reduced by 6% to JOD116.11 million (USD164 million). To make matters worse, following the suspension of all scheduled passenger flights on March 17, the airline incurred ticket refund claims of around JOD19 million (USD26.84 million).

Aside from state funding, airline management said it has attempted to mitigate losses by opening talks with lessors and lenders to reschedule lease and loan payments due over the lockdown period. To that end, Royal Jordanian signed an amendment letter to its syndication loan agreement in which loan installments due over the period March 2020 to September 2020 have been rescheduled and allocated to the installments subsequent to September 2020 on a proportional basis.

In April, the airline's board of directors also approved a new loan facility of JOD50 million (USD70.6 million) to finance its cash flows and to meet "un-avoidable cash obligations" which became due during the lockdown period.

Government owns a total of 92.35% of Royal Jordanian's shares as of March 31, 2020. It does so through three state-owned entities namely the Investment Management Company (82.03%), Mint Trading Middle East Ltd. (4.99%), and the Social Security Corporation (5.33%).