Abra Group, the parent company of Avianca, Gol and Wamos Air, has reported a sharply wider loss for the second quarter of 2026 and says it will focus on preserving liquidity and pushing fares higher as it works through what it calls a challenging environment.
The group's operating loss for the April-June period widened to $365 million, from $47 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Net loss grew to $766 million, from $178 million. Revenue over the period rose 17.7% year-on-year to $2.6 billion, but that growth was overshadowed by an almost one-third rise in operating costs.
Fuel is the headline problem
The single largest driver was fuel. Abra's fuel bill rose 80% year-on-year, and the group says just under half of that increase was recaptured through measures such as higher fares. Abra says it remains on track to achieve an average pass-through rate of 60% for the 10-month period running from March to December.
Speaking on the group's second-quarter earnings call on 21 August, Abra chief executive Adrian Neuhauser said the three months to 30 June were hit not only by higher fuel costs, but also by currencies moving against the group, and by the fact that it was a seasonally weak quarter.
The pass-through logic is straightforward but slow. Airlines cannot reprice an existing booking curve overnight, so a fuel spike lands on the income statement months before the fare increases that offset it show up in revenue. A 60% average recapture target over a 10-month window is an admission that the remaining 40% is simply absorbed.
Premium cabins are carrying the growth
The clearest bright spot in the results is at the front of the aircraft. Abra says premium revenue rose 69% year-on-year in the second quarter and now represents 28% of passenger revenue. The group says it will continue to invest in its premium products, where it is seeing strong demand, alongside its efforts to push fares up.
"We've seen a good market reaction to that," Neuhauser said of the fare strategy.
That mix shift matters for a group built largely on Latin American short and medium-haul flying. Premium seats on a narrowbody carry a very different margin profile from the back of the cabin, and a 69% jump in premium revenue is the kind of number that changes route economics faster than a fare increase spread across every seat.
The wet-lease boom cools
Abra's Wamos Air unit, which operates in the wet-lease market, saw revenue fall 5.8% in the second quarter to $91 million. The company attributes the decline to what it describes as the normalisation of the wet-lease market, following an exceptional year in 2025 when the business benefited from unusually strong demand.
That normalisation is being felt across the ACMI sector. The capacity shortages that made leased aircraft and crews so valuable in recent years have eased as deliveries improve and engine shop visits work through the backlog, and operators that expanded into the gap are now competing for a smaller pool of contracts.
For Abra, the combination is uncomfortable but not unfamiliar: a core airline business absorbing a fuel shock it can only partially pass on, a premium segment growing fast enough to matter, and a leasing arm returning to earth after an exceptional run.
Sources: FlightGlobal. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Elena Vargas.
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