Good morning, everybody. This third quarter presentation. Starting with our awards. We also won a lot of awards this year. Very proud of the World Travel Award, second year in a row for the Europe's leading low-cost airline. We also have started up long-haul routes out of Paris, very successfully launched. We have also announced that we will launch long-haul routes out of Barcelona, covering Miami, New York and Los Angeles, as well as San Francisco. So far, we have added 14 new aircraft 800s, and 3, as you see there, on the -9 Dreamliners, and we received number four this morning. In this quarter, we have received 4 NGs and 2 actually -9. -9 is the bigger Dreamliner. Going forward, we will only receive the bigger Dreamliner. Highest load ever on the third quarter, 91%.
There is a lot of new catchment areas that we have gone into, always stimulate those by price. Still, we ended up with a clean EBITDA with around NOK 2.3 billion, up from NOK 1.7 billion last year. We are flying 8.6 million passengers this quarter. That's up 12%, a steady increase in the number of passengers. Being able to fill the airplanes. Record high load factor, up to 91% in this quarter, up 0.6% last year. We have put in a lot of capacity, 16.6%, we even are able to increase the load factor up, we have 17.3% growth in the RPK. The traffic, the average flying distance have increased 4%.
Looking at our passengers or where we are building presence, you can see that, I think it's needless to say, we are the largest carrier in Norway over sale, added another 740,000 passengers, 41% of the market share. Our biggest growth actually been in Spain, the reason for that, of course, is we have started operating Spanish domestic. Show you later, Spain is now a very important area for us. Of course, we are growing also in Gatwick. Otherwise, we are growing in all the areas. Where are passengers coming from? More than 1 million passengers, actually 1.2 million passengers, booked from us in Spain. As you see, Spain is now our next biggest area outside Norway. More than 50% or around 50% of all our passengers are now coming from outside Scandinavia.
Areas where we have the largest growth is, of course, Spain and also U.S., you see with the Dreamliner. 15% growth on the top line. Our unit revenues have reduced by 3%, we have a high load. This is no net currency impact. There is a mix, of course, that brings us to a low yield. Needless to say, increased sector length is part of it, and it's better filling on the airplanes. The growth is mainly coming from Spain and Sweden. We are growing in all areas, most important is Spain and Sweden. As you see here now, we have a 21% growth in year-over-year on domestic, and that's mainly domestic Spain that is growing. All the areas are growing, most of it is domestic Spain. International, of course, we put on more and more operation with the Dreamliners.
You will see us in especially next year, we will have a fairly large growth on, to say it mildly, on the Dreamliner. 23% growth in total ancillary revenue in the third quarter. That is 14% share of the group revenue. Of course, the ticket price in the third quarter is higher. That means that even if we grow the ancillary revenue, it will be not that large part in third quarter. The passenger sales increased 10%, as you can see here. We have a very good ancillary revenue. Short-haul is growing, but needless to say, long-haul is growing very nicely. That brings up that the total is growing from 126 to 138. It is a nice growth, but there is a lot more to gain on ancillary revenue. You will see us coming with more products in 2017.
We are currently operating 40 long-haul routes, that is our main strategy as we have focused on, that is long-haul. Easy to compete with the legacy carriers than the low-cost carriers. Even though they try to stop us all over, they are not very successful in that. First transatlantic flight to Paris started in July. Actually, first time I have seen 100% load factor in the month, that was in August on that route, on the routes into Paris. They are very well received. We are starting to get a good grip on U.S., and you have also seen the bookings, as I showed you, from the Americans. That is one of the largest growing markets. In 2017, we will add additional new routes. We will have more than 50 routes in 2017.
Especially new routes in 2017, as I can mention is, of course, Barcelona, and also adding another route out of Denmark, namely Copenhagen, San Francisco. We have only launched part of our operation next year, so we have a lot more interesting, very, very interesting routes that will pop up. Of course, needless to say, we are focusing also on adding frequencies to our existing network, especially on long-haul. This is the scale-up of the long-haul. You will see us here on the four, but here you can see the yield starting nicely increase on the long-haul. Also in 2018, we will really take a good grip on the long-haul area. We will scale up to 32 long-haul aircraft by 2018, and that is only less than two years ahead. Sorry. We have a top modern fleet now, 3.6 years. We have 116.
As we speak, we have actually received one today, so we have actually 117, but we have one older airplane that we are delivering back. We replace older equipment with brand-new equipment, and that we will continue to do. We will increase, as you see in 2017, especially starting that we look much forward to, starting the transatlantic expansion also on the narrow-body with the launch of the MAX. Not much changes between our competitors. The unit cost, as you can see here, this is on a full year. We are keeping up, but we are still too high. We need to get lower on the cost, and we will get lower on the cost. Frode, you can take the financials.
Yes. Okay. I will run through the P&L, financial position, the cash flow statement, and also the guiding for this year and next year. On this slide here shows the reported third quarter results, where our earnings before tax improves to NOK 1.3 billion, and the best result we have reported so far in our history, and on the revenues of NOK 8.4 billion. The underlying or clean EBITDA we report today is an increase to NOK 2.3 billion. We're taking some non-recurring items, one-offs, since we have used a bit more wet lease than our ambition was this quarter. Adjusting for this, we have a solid NOK 2.3 billion in our third quarter results. Also, we have comments on the other losses and gains this quarter. That's NOK 207 million loss related to currency effects on the working capital.
Unit cost is coming down this quarter with 4%, adjusted for currency, we're down 5%, and see our business model coming into place. Of course, fuel price is a big contributor to the decrease, and we keep a relatively flat unit cost excluding fuel. Key components of cost is coming down. We see the leasing cost coming up because of the non-recurring wet lease this quarter, and handling costs are coming up a bit due to EU care compensation. We're giving back to the travelers as we have had some difficulties this summer. Cost is coming down rapidly and depreciation is increasing because we're taking the aircraft on the balance sheet. All in all, better development on unit cost.
On cash flow, we see the first nine months, again, very strong cash flow from operations, NOK 2.8 billion, and invest NOK 5.4 billion in new aircraft, of which NOK 3.1 million is financed by only cash. Raising about NOK 2.3 billion in financing towards the investments and ends up with NOK 2.2 billion in the cash position at the end of the quarter. Financial position balance sheet. The changes are again driven by Norwegian Air Shuttle taking on new aircraft. Total balance of NOK 34 billion, NOK 20.5 billion related to the assets, the aircraft, financed by NOK 18.7 billion net long-term debt. We see PDP payments towards the next year's delivery growing to NOK 6.5 billion, and have financed that investment with NOK 4.7 billion in financing and the rest related to cash used with our cash at hand. End of the quarter, equity increases to 10% equity ratio.
If we were to capitalize on Bank Norwegian investment, we would have had an equity ratio of 16%, and find our balanced financial position at this time quite satisfactory. Looking briefly on the financing activities we have done and we'll be doing. First of all, we have guided on NOK 1 billion in CapEx for 2016, NOK 2.1 billion next year. The activities toward PDP payments and liquidity in general, we have tapped up the bonds, unsecured bonds we have. Done two transactions the last three, four months. We have closed PDP financing arrangements with backstop lease for five Boeing 737s. As you know, we already have the PDP financing in place for the 51st Airbus A320neos to be delivered. On long-term financing, we're just about to close or finalize the EETC we did this spring.
Last aircraft is put into the facility. It will be listed by the end of the year. Also, we're doing commercial financing. We have done one sale-leaseback third quarter. The European and U.S. EXIM export guarantees is always a part of the financing arrangements. Outlook for 2016. We see, as we said last time as well, a soft macroeconomics in parts of the route portfolio. Also, there's been another tax introduced in Norway. Of course, we see effects from that. We're monitoring the post-Brexit situation in U.K. We don't see real changes to bookings. We do have currency exposure on the sales in British pounds. About 6, 7% of sales on an annual basis is related to the GBP. Booking volumes on par, capacity adjusted.
We do expect the unit revenue to come down since we do have fairly high growth. The distance and the mix of sales do influence the unit revenue. As we always do looking forward, selling tickets forward, price is a tool to increase demand, and we will use yield as required to fill up the aircraft going forward, as we always have. Our guiding on growth for 2016 is 18% unchanged, and we're not doing any changes to the unit cost either. Last quarter, we did comment on some of these non-recurring items, one-offs, to adjust for those. Otherwise, we're unchanged on unit cost for 2016. Same number of aircraft to be delivered this year, 17 737s, four leased 787-9s, and of course, the Arctic Aviation Assets is taking on the A320neo, that's already leased to a third party. Quick look at our targets for 2017.
We usually come back fourth quarter to finalize the guiding for 2017. At this time, the target for 2017 is a production growth of 30%, where the narrow-body fleet will count for 20% growth compared to the narrow-body production done in 2016. The wide-body production will be up 60%, when we measured this by ASK. We're taking on the new 737 MAX 8 next year, and the capacity those aircraft will add is 5 percentage points of the growth for the narrow-body fleet. These are aircraft with longer distance, so if they do short haul or long haul, it's more about the type of aircraft we're guiding on the production part. We do expect increased distance and change in the mix again, when we do move into 2017 and add on this capacity.
On the unit cost guiding or target for next year, we expect it to end in the area of 0.38 øre-0.39 øre. Keeping in mind we are changing the assumptions for this guiding. It's not really comparable to 2016 guiding. The assumptions on fuel, we have increased from where we expect to be in 2016, 350-ish USD per ton to 500 USD. Not necessarily where we think the oil price will be, not a guiding on our expectations on oil price. That's the assumption we make. Together with the U.S. dollar NOK of 8.25, EUR NOK of 9. With the growth, we expect cost to be in the area of 0.38 øre-0.39 øre. If we were to use the assumptions for 2016, this guiding would be a unit cost of 0.36 øre-0.37 øre, which is, I believe, about a 6% decrease from our expected 2016.
We will be taking on 32 new aircraft, 17 737/8, returning four old leased aircraft, taking on low cost, exchanging it with high cost aircraft. We are taking six 737 MAX 8, and nine 787-9 Dreamliners, of which four are leased. Arctic Aviation Assets, our subsidiary, will take delivery of eight A320neos, of which six are already committed on external leases. With that, and in summary, the results, we are very happy with the results we have presented. Very strong third quarter results of NOK 1.3 billion before tax, the strongest we have had so far. We are maintaining a very strong and stable load factor at record high levels. We are and will be ramping up the long-haul operation, launching new routes, as Bjørn touched on, from Barcelona to the States and other to be announced.
Excited to take on the MAXes next year, happy with the financing being on track. With that, I think we are ready to leave it to questions.
When you want to ask a question, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone, because we need that for the webcast, too.
Yes. Yep. Microphone.
I won the race. Preben Rasch-Olesen , Carnegie. Quick question on your clean EBITDA. You're adjusting for the wet lease. Is that sort of the gap between what the cost would've been if you had flown with your own aircraft instead of using wet lease, or is it just the price you're paying for that wet lease? My point being that your cost would have been higher if you were flying with your own aircraft.
Yeah. What we do on the non-recurring items, when they isolate the wet lease cost, it's, as I said, the wet lease we would like to be without. We do have a wet lease plan for in-house, any airline has that. The ambition we had for third quarter was to use less wet lease. Yes, this is the cost of that wet lease we added. You can say if we had done that production ourselves, we would have had some cost with that production. This is the wet lease as a whole.
Also very quickly on the capacity growth. I believe you've said or hinted towards 25% in the past for 2017. Now it's 30. Could you explain the deviation or is it just me remembering wrong?
Just to comment on that. If I should start comment on that, we do have targets for growth. We communicate. As the year goes, we are doing adjustments to when we do different launches of new routes. Long-haul, short-haul, combination of that has a big effect on the ASK. Long-haul has a lot more ASK in it, the growth numbers will vary depending on what we actually decide when we do go out and guide. It's a deviation between a target and the actual guiding when we come to that point in time. Bjørn, you may want to add to that.
Obviously, you add a lot more ASKs if you have longer routes.
Sometimes we have aircraft moving a bit around, like what happens with the Airbus A320. Some delays on that, so you have capacity being moved without our control. Other questions?
Yes. Petter Nystrøm, ABG. Following up Preben's question on the capacity growth, could you say a little bit about the mix between new routes and adding frequency on the routes, trying to get a feel of the yield pressure you are facing then in 2017? Thanks.
I can answer to that. First of all, you will see us adding a lot more frequencies on existing routes, primarily that will be out of areas like Paris and London. We have seen that before, that actually adding frequencies brings up the yield, not down. It's not a consequence that adding frequency will get the yield down. On the opposite. Later in the year, you will see us, of course, opening new routes. In the first half year, you will not see us except for Barcelona. You will not see us opening that many new routes. When we speak about Barcelona is so far not served between U.S. West Coast and Barcelona or in Spain in total.
Good morning. Martin Stenshall with Danske Bank. First, could you please comment something about the expected CASK on long-haul? Could you please also talk a bit about the expected scalability on the long-haul operation with nine more aircraft next year? The second question, about financing in general. Could you please comment on the situation with Ex-Im still being partly closed, and how you view other financing sources like the sale-leaseback market and EETC? Thank you.
I can start with that, Frode. Obviously, scale is important also in long-haul as well as in short-haul. By ramping up the long-haul operation, you will have lower cost. On the other hand, there is a lot of training going on. There aren't many 787 pilots out in the street, so we have to train them all. That will, of course, until we get up to the level that we are satisfied with, you will have a cost of just ramping up the operation.
To comment on the financing part. First of all, Ex-Im or export credits in general. Norwegian have, over the last two and a half years, not used those types of financing as we have entered into commercial bank lending and done the EETC to have more sources of financing in the portfolio. We need to do a combination. It's very favorable with the pricing of Ex-Im guaranteed financing. We have a dialogue again with the U.S. Ex-Im Bank on that for 2017, as it seems they might be coming back into business. They were approved this spring, and there's some formality on other parts for Ex-Im to be back in business. We're planning to utilize that. Also, as I said, we have other sources of financing. The EETC market we opened for ourselves this spring is very potent, capable.
We're keeping that option open as well. On sale-leaseback, we have done a bit of that recently, since we see that type of financing being favorable. We always use, of course, the cheapest financing available to us, and very happy with that transaction we just did.
We have time for one more question.
I have two. Bank Norwegian Reward, CashPoints. How many % of the tickets were bought from achieve the CashPoints from the card? The pilots are recently in bad condition at the same time. Have you do some action for the pilots that they don't shall get sick, everybody at the same time? Maybe not give all of them same food or something. Have you do some action in that way?
Oh, no, I can answer to the last question. No, I don't think the pilots There is good pilots out there, so you shouldn't take that into consideration. That's for sure. Of course, the only thing I can answer on the Bank Norwegian, we have the largest program for the frequent flyer cards in airline here in Scandinavia as we speak. We were the largest one back in August. Yes, still increasing, and we will soon reach 5 million members. Part of that is, of course, the revenues on our reward program is naturally financed by third parties.