To be honest, 15 millions is 5 days worth of revenue at the scale of SN. So 15 millions in difference can come from anywhere. I personally also thought that they would book around 40 million in losses before subsidies. I was wrong by 15 millions versus their operational result.I guess someone has been walking in the wrong corridor...
But as a 767 pilot I doubt that is an SN corridor...
In addition, the operational result was -25 millions plus subsidies, so you can't say that we were too far off for people who don't have any hard data to go on, any sales revenue progression. I'm sure that you can forgive me for a 1.5% margin of error given all the variables?
For 2015, I think that 10-20 million in profits should be easy to achieve. But again, I don't have data on how much fuel and currency they have hedged. If none of that is hedged, they should easily achieve 50 millions in profits, providing they don't waste 30 millions on "investments" like a new FFP program, the markets stay stable and oil prices don't go up.
This new FFP program is giving me mixed feelings. They merged their previous FFP Privilege into the less "fancy" M&M and now they want their independence back. In one way I think that it's a waste of money, but in another way I think that there is an opportunity to make this successful if they apply the right conditions and the right perks.
For intra-EU travel, but also Africa, if they can offer low entry thresholds into a medium-tier ("Bronze status") which offers free lounge access with every SN ticketed flight to/from and via BRU and some smooth status matching into that tier, they could win a lot of frequent flyers.
Last but not least, I want to highlight that Asia will be paramount to SN's Africa growth but also stability in the future. I think that a codeshare with Air China and pulling them into BRU is very important. I think that on routes like Beijing, Air China can perform better than if SN try it by themselves. They can achieve a good amount of transfer traffic to Africa but also attract many Chinese package tour groups.
Also, to/from Tokyo, I think that they would be baffled by the amount of high-yield transfer pax and cargo they will be able to achieve to Africa. But this flight could be done by SN themselves or with NH/JL. NH is focussing on transpacific growth, so I don't think that they would consider it a priority. Perhaps SN should consider a full scale codeshare with JL even if it pisses off LH? I think that JL and its government shareholding would be more motivated to honour a direct link with the capital of Europe and they will have excess aircraft starting next year. It's not unheard of, as JL has major codeshares with non-alliance members like AF, AZ, SQ, TG, KE and even EK, which must really piss off BA.
And if SN is able to get close to a deal with JL, perhaps they could make NH change their mind?
In all these cases, SN will have to take the initiative.