Starlux Airlines (JX, Taipei Taoyuan) has revealed that it is planning to raise more funds later this year to strengthen its working capital and fight high losses despite what it claimed to be a slowly improving financial situation this year.
Spokesman Nieh Kuo-wei told the country’s Central News Agency on June 12 that the airline may inject additional capital or look for financing externally. Starlux had already completed a capital increase in April, of TWD4 billion Taiwan new dollars (USD134 million), 90% of which was funded by owner and chairman Chang Kuo-wei with the rest subscribed to by employees.
The carrier launched scheduled operations on January 23, 2020, just a week before the first pandemic restrictions began to affect its services from Taipei Taoyuan to Macau International. Now, however, it aims to launch A330-900 operations on June 1, 2022, deploying its first widebody on routes across South-East Asia.
StarLux Airlines remains under pressure from the pandemic, Nieh admitted to the news agency, but it is witnessing a recovery in demand as travel restrictions gradually loosen. Flights to the West Coast of the United States are planned for the first quarter of 2023, he added.
Nieh insisted that StarLux had managed to reduce its losses, pointing to first-quarter revenue of NTD270 million (USD9.1 million), up 46.7% from the same period in 2021. However, according to a quarterly report on Taiwanese carriers recently issued by the local Civil Aeronautics Administration, StarLux still posted a net loss of TWD1.22 billion (USD42 million), which raised its accumulated losses to TWD8.15 billion (USD274 million).
Fleet-wise, this year it plans to take delivery of five more A321neo, two A330-900N, and two A350-900s, Nieh said. According to the ch-aviation fleets module, it currently operates ten A321-200NX and two of the A330neo, and it has a total of seventeen A350-900s on order.
