Kingdom and Europe, is looking for financial improvements after turning the route from a perennial money-loser to a break even operation.

Local manager, Mr. Phillip Troake, said: "There is evidence that the United Kingdom incentive travel market is coming back. And in the local market, people are starting to travel again.

"It was a much brighter summer over last year, both from the standpoints of the local and overseas markets. And we are even looking for further improvements again this year.'' The airline has spent the last two years trying to change the fortunes of the lengthy route. Mr. Troake continued: "Bermuda is a difficult place to do business. It's such a small market. There are a lot of things that mitigate against a financial success. It's a long route.

"We've turned some pretty hefty losses from our old style of business that we abandoned in 1992, to respectable years. We went from a loss of $20-million annually to a break-even point. We've stemmed the tide of losses.'' Mr. Troake advocates more frequency of flights and smaller aircraft, but he said that will take a couple of years to develop, because they will need to be using the next generation of jet aircraft, more fuel efficient aircraft which will help with the finance side.

"We're hoping to increase flight frequency, but we're not in the game of putting flights on speculatively. It would be better for us to wait until we can get replacements for the aging DC-10 fleet. They were designed, unfortunately, when fuel was cheaper. A more efficient aircraft is coming.'' One aspect of British Airways' local route in which there is no complaint is business travel. Mr. Troake said: "Business travel is the most significant aspect of our route. Bermuda is one of the few island destinations enjoying high yield travel comparable to at least provincial areas of the mainland.'' Mr. Troake was commenting as British Airways announced a tripling of their pre-tax profits for the three months to December 31, up to 65-million from 20-million a year ago. Pre-tax profits for the nine months to December 31 was 300-million, up 21.5 per cent.

Sir Colin Marshall, BA chairman, said the results reflected "an improvement in the economic climate in our two major markets of the United Kingdom and United States, recovering premium traffic, and the benefit of our profit improvement programme and lower net interest payable.

"Economic recovery, evident in a number of important markets, is enabling British Airways to continue to maintain traffic growth consistent with increases in capacity, and at encouraging levels in premium classes.'' The carrier failed to make any significant gains in passenger or cargo yields with airline blaming excess capacity in the industry.

MR. PHILLIP TROAKE -- BA manager in Bermuda.