Very much. Welcome to our Presentation of our Q4 results. We have our first full year of operation behind us, and we carried almost 1 million passengers over 4,000 flights. Despite this being the first year in operation, we haven't yet had a full operational year since last year was the startup year for our airline in U.K. We started operations only in Q2, so it was still a year of building up the company, but at least a year where we had operation throughout the entire year. We did fairly well on a number of metrics and have learning potential from others. From Q4 alone, we more than doubled the revenues compared to the year before, and we also saw the revenue per passenger go up by more than 40%.
The load factors for the quarter were about 70%, which is 12% up from 2023, and we completed 100% of our flights. So, operationally, it was a good quarter for us. We also raised $55 million in Q4 to ensure that we could cover the winter season, and we think we are in a good position for the current winter that we are going through. And we also had a supplementary private raise that added another $7 million. And then we appointed Seabury Capital in the last quarter, first to go through our business and verify our business model, and secondly, to assist us in the negotiations with several partners that we are aiming to work with in the future.
We have been contacted by a number of airlines who were interested in investing in the company or cooperating with a company, and Seabury is going to assist us through that negotiation phase. We already touched on the load factors and the operational performance. As I said, we completed 100% of our flights, and we had a dip in punctuality, particularly in December, which was mainly due to weather at the various airports we were flying. But generally, we are on a positive track when it comes to operational performance. On the number of passengers, we see that we had a good development. The available seat kilometer went up by more than 80%, and the number of passengers more than doubled in the quarter. And we can also see that we are on a good trend into the quarter we are in right now.
We'll touch a bit upon that, later on. We also see that the airfares have been growing, and the total revenue per passenger is up by 42% from 239 - 340, and we see that revenue increase has continued also into 2024. So we are at a better place when it comes to pricing our tickets, but we also know there is some room for improvement, particularly in the peak season. Our cost base is improving. It improved 21% from Q4 2023 to Q4 2022. Having said that, we did have less production in Q4 than we anticipated, and part of the reason was that some of the routes we had selected did not perform as well as we wanted, and we decided to trim down the schedule.
Then we had to maintain our fixed cost, so the cost that we had to distribute on flights gave us a higher cost per available seat kilometer for Q4 than we had for Q3. We think the Q3 number is more representative of our cost on an all-year basis, and we think even that number is going to come down quite a bit as we complete the full year of 2024. Also, our revenue per seat kilometer continues to go up, went up by 13%.
Also, we may add there that the ticket price might have gone up by even more, but some of our flights are charters, where the charter is paying for fuel and for other variable costs, so the perceived revenue per seat kilometer would be less than if these flights were selling our own tickets. On ancillary services, we are now number one in the world according to official statistics. Ancillary services are those revenues that we get from other fees than tickets itself. They could be baggage, they can be an upgrade to a premium cabin, they can be seat allocation, and a lot of other selections that people might choose to buy. And also, some of them will be by third-party providers, insurance, hotels, car companies, etc.
This is an area where I think we have performed very well, but we also think there is more room for improvement there, particularly when it comes to adding more services into our ecosystem. Anders, you'll comment on the numbers, Anders, our CFO.
I will. Thank you so much, Bjørn Tore. When looking at the numbers for Q4, we see that we had revenue, total revenue of $94.8 million for the quarter. This is up 104% compared to quarter four in 2022, mainly because of we increased capacity by 81%. We increased revenue passenger revenue of 42%, and the load factor increased from 62%-70%. So good performance on all metrics compared to the same quarter last year. If we look at the total revenue for the fiscal year of 2023, we had $439.4 million. In the quarter, we had personnel expenses of $29.3 million, which is both airborne and non-airborne per personnel. We had fuel cost of $40.1 million and other OpEx of $44.2 million. This is maintenance, ground handling, and various technical items.
An SG&A of $9.4 million, which is both admin and also marketing and distribution costs. This leaves us to a negative EBITDA of $28.3 million in the quarter. We still have some few aircraft that are under the power-by-the-hour aircraft lease terms with lessors, and those costs were $7.3 million in the quarter. Then depreciation and net finance is really the sum of the lease accounting cost for the lease payments we do to the lessors. Keeping in mind that a big portion of this is non-cash. And for the quarter, you know, if you want to see the total lease cost, you have to combine variable, depreciation, and net finance. Then you have an approximate figure for us on the leasing cost. Out of those costs, $10 million are non-cash in the quarter.
For the full year, there were $60 million of non-cash. So it means that the bottom line would have been $10 million better in the quarter and $60 million better in the for the full year if you eliminate these non-cash items. Then if we go to the cash flow statement, we had operating cash flow negative $28.8 million in the quarter. We had investing cash flows of $4.3 million. This is maintenance reserves paid to the lessors. Financing cash flow was positive $35.9 million. This is the net of the cash raised, equity raised during the quarter of $55 million and $20 million of equity paid, sorry, of lease payments to the lessors. This leads us to a net change in free cash of $11.8 million and a total cash held at the end of the quarter of $54.8 million.
Looking at the balance sheet, which is important, there are two figures that we have pointed out earlier, which are important to monitor. Especially one is the credit card receivables. $60.2 million are held of our money, are basically held by the credit card companies at the end of the year. This can be compared to the deferred passenger revenue of $52.4 million at the end of the year. One other thing I would like to comment on here is that all the current liabilities have increased. This is up to $160 million. This is simply an accounting matter as more and more aircraft go out of the power-by-the-hour terms with the lessors and go over to fixed lease payments. Also, you will see that there's negative equity here at the end of the year of $89.7 million.
Keep in mind that these reflect 100 and accumulated $141 million of non-cash aircraft lease accounting costs since inception. Also, when we look at the value-adjusted equity, when we include the net present value of the aircraft leases, we are in a well-positive landscape, which is also important to note. So, Bjørn Tore, back to you.
Thank you. So, as I said, this is our first year of full operation, 2024, and we believe that we are now on a path to profitability. It's always very hard to predict how the year will end because we have only so much visibility into the year. But what we can see so far is that bookings are very strong. They are stronger than they were at the same time last year, about 80% more revenue sold just in tickets alone. And we have a very much stronger forward book when it comes to charter, which is going to be a very important part of our winter strategy. For us, it is very important to have a low cost, a low cost per passenger carried.
We're going to focus this year to ensure that we will be the lowest cost operator across the Atlantic and in the markets that we are operating. I think we are on a very good track to get there. We're going to increase our capacity from 10 operational aircraft to 12 aircraft during the year. We will do that by taking back two aircraft that are now subleased to another airline. One of them has been prolonged a couple of months at very attractive terms. The other is coming within a few weeks' time into our own production. All these aircraft will be used for our own production during the summer.
But for the lower part of the season, we are going to charter out, either on a wet-lease basis or on a normal charter basis, a good portion of the fleet, maybe up to 50% of the fleet for the coming winter. We have already got commitments both from companies that want to charter our aircraft, but also group bookings for a large number of customers that travel that has bought their tickets through tour operators, and that will be carried by Norse to sunny destinations in 2024. Of course, right now, our main focus is on summer because this is where we can make most of our money. We are seeing bookings that are very strong. We are seeing also load factors coming up quite a bit. January this year, we had a 12% increase versus last year.
In February, we're going to have a 20% increase compared to last year. We think that the increase will be strong also going into the next few months and summer. Another important step for us has been to offer a better premium product. There are a number of customers that would like to have even greater comfort and are willing to pay a higher price for a separate premium product, which both gives a different cabin, different seat layout and different service. We see that the uplift in this demand has gone up quite a bit since we have improved that product.
Also, we are now selling our tickets at a much more dynamic pricing method, using technology to assess the market conditions at any given time, which gives us the better ability to price tickets at an optimal price, not to go too high because we won't sell any tickets, but not to go too low and leave money on the table either. And this technology has proven already after a few weeks that it's generating more revenues for us for the same tickets sold. We also have another 3 aircraft that is under our control. And we have agreed with the current lessor that they will continue for another year to charter these 3 aircraft. Those are the 73, so correction, 787-8s, and slightly smaller than the rest of the fleet. And they have been continued on very good terms.
We know there is a high demand in the market for these aircraft because there is a shortage of aircraft, both long-haul and short-haul in the market right now. And the aircraft manufacturers are way behind in deliveries according to their commitments. So right now, it's a very good place to be to actually control widebody aircraft of the type that we are doing, very modern and very fuel efficient. The seasonality for us is really the thing to crack. Summer is, as I said, where we have to maximize our return, but winter is the period where we have to not necessarily reduce much activity, but put the capacity elsewhere. And that will be in the charter market and flying both for tour operators, cruise companies, and other airlines.
And as late as this week, we announced an agreement with a Nigerian company, Air Peace, that will wet-lease one of our aircraft for flights between London and Lagos at rates that are very good for us, but also at market rates. And we know that this type of added activity is going to be very important for us also in the year to come. We mentioned that we have already successfully placed a private placement in the market last year to ensure that we would have liquidity for this winter. And we are now working with Seabury to negotiate partnerships and possible co-investments with from other airlines. And these talks are progressing. I can't give you too much insight right now since it is work in progress, but so far it has been very, very positive.
We will continue to update the market when we have something new to report there. So, we are very happy to take some questions. Before that, I'd just like to say that we are very blessed with a fantastic team here at Norse who works to ensure that all these aircraft are in mint condition. Those are people on the ground, people in the technical setup, and not least our crew. We think we have the best crew in the world, and we are getting a lot of very positive feedback from our customers who love to fly with us, and we think this is going to continue. We have typically the lowest fares in the industry because we have the lowest cost, but it's really a great value product, and much of that product is delivered by our great crew.
So, for those of you who also would like to fly with us, welcome on board. Now I think we are ready for some questions.
Hello, and thank you to everybody who's submitted questions. There's been a lot of interest in our results and in Norse Atlantic, as always. There's certainly three main themes, which we're going to collectively put together, and I will put to both Bjørn Tore and Anders, just in the interest of time because there are so many questions. Seabury is a big theme, and is there any further update we can give in regards to the process and how this may take shape? There's multiple questions that I'm going to go into one. So one is the process and how will it take shape. Is there a profile of the interested parties that we can talk about? Are we only at the moment looking at partnerships or potentially the sale of the entire company? And lastly, are we finding it challenging to actually find these partners with Seabury?
That's a lot of questions. So I think I'll just make a very general answer because obviously we cannot comment too much on an ongoing discussion like this. And both because they are simply work in progress, and also because we are under NDAs, both ways in such discussions. But what we can say is that there is a lot of interest, and some of these partnerships that we are looking at are not necessarily mutually exclusive. So we might have partnership with more than one airline. I think when it comes to acquiring the entire company, that is always something that is up to regulators, etc., which would be a very, very different process. And right now, the discussions are along minority investments.
But, there are no, what should I say, no ruling out of any outcome in a scenario like this, but I can't give any specific comments.
Thank you. Moving on, there's also a number of questions about our plans at London Gatwick and whether it will continue to be a focus for Norse going forward.
Absolutely. London Gatwick is very important for us. It's the second biggest airport this summer for us, the biggest being New York, JFK. We consider ourselves a sort of Euro-American carrier, but London Gatwick will be very important for us also in the future.
Thank you. Also, whether there'd be a necessity for a further capital raise.
As far as we know now, then absolutely not. But, in this business, one shall never rule out anything, but, we think we are at a good place when it comes to capital for the foreseeable future.
Thank you. There is one more question that's come in, in regards to differences in leasing rates, when compared to the age of the different 787 aircraft that we have. And can we elaborate on the calculations, in regards to those leasing rates? Is that?
Yeah, well, again, I can say a very general answer here is that our leasing rates are done at the historic low levels. We have the best leasing rates in the industry for this type of aircraft by far. The market has strengthened. That is partly caused by a lack of supply of new aircraft. And we know that what we are paying is much less than what anybody else would have to pay today. But of course, there is a difference between aircraft and there is also a difference between the versions of the aircraft. We can't go into specific about each individual aircraft, but we are well in the money.
Great. Thank you very much, Bjørn Tore and Anders, for your details that you've gone through today. Thank you, everybody, for joining our live presentation. We remain at your disposal through investor relations and through the media contacts should you have any further questions throughout the day. Thank you very much.