State-owned China Southern Air Holding Co, parent of China Southern Airlines Co Ltd, had a record pretax profit of nearly three bln yuan in 2007, the official Xinhua news agency reported. It gave no comparative profit figures.

Quoting general manager Liu Shaoyong, the report said that the parent company’s total revenue for 2007 increased 13.6 pct to over 50 bln yuan.

It carried 56.74 mln passengers and 863,000 tons of cargo in 2007, up 15.3 pct and 5.4 pct from a year earlier, respectively.

China Southern Airlines, the listed unit, swung to a net profit of 118 mln yuan in 2006 from a net loss of 1.794 bln a year earlier, as passenger traffic increased.
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