Jet Airways reports smaller full-year loss

By Tommy Wilkes

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Jet Airways on Friday said it made a net loss of 21 billion rupees ($329 million) in the year ending in March, about half the size of the loss it made last year, after earning more in passenger revenues.

For the final quarter of the year, Jet said it lost 17.29 billion rupees, down from last year's 21.54 billion rupees, its worst-ever.

The airline, 24 percent owned by Abu Dhabi's Etihad, has not made an annual profit since 2007, as tough competition and high operating costs in India's aviation industry make it difficult to turn a profit.

Jet, India's second-biggest carrier by market share after privately held IndiGo, has announced a cost-cutting plan and said it expects to make a full-year profit in 2017.

"FY15 was an encouraging year when we set out to change the fundamentals of this business, allowing us to deliver a significant improvement in our net result," chairman Naresh Goyal said in a statement.

Goyal said that India's aviation market still suffered from "structural challenges and robust competition" that were pressuring yields.

Rival SpiceJet on Thursday reported its first quarterly profit since mid-2013, thanks largely to one-off gains from renegotiating contracts and an insurance claim.

Delhi-based aviation consultancy CAPA said this week the ticket prices at which airlines could break even were still discouraging many Indians from flying, and so carriers continued to charge fares that lost them money.

"We are disappointed that the benefits of the lower oil price have been lost by the below cost fares, or very low fares, charged by the airlines," the consultancy's CEO Kapil Kaul said.

Shares in Jet ended the day flat on Friday, against a 1.38 percent rise in the benchmark, leaving the stock down about 8 percent this year.

($1 = 63.7945 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Sunil Nair and Jane Merriman)