The chief executive of British Airways has stated that transatlantic yields and load factors are recovering in the fourth quarter after metrics trended negatively in the third quarter.
BA parent company IAG’s share price fell by around 10% on 7 November after it cited, among other factors, some yield and load softness on the transatlantic in the peak June-September period, but Sean Doyle insisted during the Airlines 2025 event in London on 10 November that there was nothing unexpected in this development.
“What you saw in quarter three was more a case that there was a lot of capacity into Southern Europe,” he explains. “Flights from the US carriers into Southern Europe were up 16% and that led to a bit of load factor and pricing pressure because everybody probably expected the same almost Covid-type rebound in 2025 that we saw in 2024.”
IAG had flagged this expected dynamic when reporting its second-quarter results, Doyle notes, while adding that IAG has retained its “strong” full-year earnings guidance amid better metrics on the transatlantic in the current quarter.
“We’re back to a very normal level of demand and it’s very stable,” he says.
Furthermore, Doyle says that travel demand has been “very resilient” this year, despite concerns that geopolitical and economic developments – not least the tariff policies introduced by the Donald Trump administration in the USA – might push trends in a negative direction.
With strong operating margins across all of its airline units, IAG saw its operating profit for the seasonally strong third quarter inch up year-on-year at just over €2 billion ($2.3 billion) as its net profit dropped slightly to €1.4 billion.
“The fundamentals we reported were very, very solid,” says Doyle.
