GE: Air travel 'very robust' and airlines restocking inventories on better profit expectations

General Electric chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt reported (17-Apr-2015) air travel "continues to be very robust" with strong growth in both passenger and freight revenue kilometres, particularly in the period last year Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The company's aviation business "continues to execute on new technology introductions, service offerings and cost out" and aviation "could perform better than we outlined at the December outlook meeting" according to Mr Immelt. General Electric senior VP and CFO Jeff Bornstein said airline revenue numbers "are pretty good" and revenue passenger kilometers are "very, very strong", with the aviation industry "probably having its most profitable year in history this year". Airlines are now "stocking inventory", reversing the destocking trend from 2012 and it maybe that "airlines based on the profitability of operations are more aggressively replenishing some of that destocking that happened a few years ago". [more - original PR]