Carpatair, the largest privately-held company on the Romanian regular airline market, held by businessman Nicolae Petrov, recorded a 12% traffic decline in the first eight months of this year against the similar period of 2008, to 337,000 passengers.

"This year, our target is not making a profit, but preserving our market presence as much as we can, with minimal negative effects on our financial liquidity. We anticipated the negative impact on air transport demand and we took a set of measures to counter this impact," said Paula Ardelean, sales vice-president of Carpatair.

The company is the main rival of state-owned operator Tarom on the regular airline market, put at 400 million euros, which does not include low-cost operators.

Carpatair, whose hub is in Timisoara (Eastern Romania), ended last year with a 90.5 million-euro turnover and 1.7 million euros in net losses, the first losses after six consecutive years of making a profit, according to data from the website of the Finance Ministry. However, these results come in a context where the entire air travel industry started to experience the effects of the recession at the end of last year.

Since the beginning of the year, Carpatair has streamlined its flying capacity, reducing frequency for some of its destinations. This is reflected in the diminished turnover, according to Paula Ardelean, who did not specify which destinations these changes affected.

The company reported a 45 million-euro turnover in the first eight months of this year, down 20% against the similar time in 2008.

"The number of flights operated was down by 7.5% this year. We applied -preservation tactics as much as we could, and were able to streamline our operations."

Carpatair has been operating 12 Saab 2000 aircraft this year, which can accommodate 50 passengers and three 105-seat Fokker aircraft. The average aircraft load factor was around 60% in the first eight months of the year, i.e. only 550 seats out of 915 were filled. Airline carriers in Central and Eastern Europe have been among the hardest hit by the economic crisis due to the reduction in passenger numbers and to the increase in fuel costs.