Air France reports stable traffic

BANGKOK, 8 September 2010 – Traffic and capacity on Air France’s Asian network were almost stable registering 0.3 and 0.2% declines in August and a average load factor of 88%, the airline reported Tuesday.

Overall traffic declined by 1.2% for capacity down 0.9%. The load factor remained high at 84.5%, while the group reported it carried 6.5 million passengers in August, down 0.8% over the same month last year.

Unit revenue per available seat kilometre (RASK) continued to improve and was well up on August 2009. Forward bookings for the coming months show a positive trend.

On the Americas network, traffic fell 2.1% with capacity down 1.3%. The load factor declined by 0.7 points, but remained at the high level of 88.3%.

Traffic was weaker on the Africa and Middle East network, mainly due to Ramadan which started early August. Traffic dropped 2.7%, with stable capacity (-0.1%). Load factor declined by 2.3 points to 83.4%.

On the Caribbean and Indian Ocean network, traffic rose by 2.3% with capacity up by 1.9%. Load factor gained 0.3 points to 81.7%

The European network saw a 1.1 point rise in load factor to 77.1%, with the decline in traffic of 1.4% being half that of capacity (-2.8%).