4th Sep 2014 07:57
(An item published at 0801 BST misstated the load factor change measurement. The correct version follows.)
LONDON (Alliance News) - Low-cost airline easyJet PLC and Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus Group PLC Thursday both reported higher traffic figures for August compared with a year earlier.
FTSE 100-listed easyJet said it had carried 6.6 million passengers in August, up 8.4% on the year, pushing up its load factor - a measure of how full its planes are - by 1.4 percentage points to 94.2% for the month.
The airline flew 64.3 million passengers in the 12 months to end-August, up 6.4% on the 60.5 million reported for the previous 12 months.
Aer Lingus said its traffic, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, rose 12.7% in August, buoyed by a further 28.3% increase in long-haul traffic, and a 2.8% increase in short-haul traffic.
Passenger numbers were up 5.6% on the previous year to nearly 1.1 million, with long-haul numbers rising 22.3% to 148,000, from 121,000 the previous year, and short haul passengers up 3.3% to 913,000, from 884,000.
Its load factor in August rose 1.2 percentage points to 87.8%, as the growth in traffic more than offset a 11.1% increase in capacity measured in available seat kilometres.
For the year-to-date, Aer Lingus said traffic measured in revenue passenger kilometres rose 7.9% to 10.9 million, from 10.1 million in the previous 12 months. Passenger numbers for the year-to-date were up 2.2% to 6.7 million, from 6.6 million in the previous 12 months.
easyJet doesn't provide traffic figures in revenue passenger kilometres, which takes account of the number of revenue paying passengers aboard the plane by distance travelled.
By Alice Attwood; [email protected]; @AliceAtAlliance
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