Passengers down 2% in July; Olympic Airlines unexpectedly tops load factor rankings among medium-sized flag-carriers

Olympic reported a 6.1 percentage point improvement in load factor to 81.7%, giving it the highest load factor among the medium-sized flag-carriers examined.

AEA statistics for July confirm that demand is weakening across many markets with passenger numbers among member airlines down 2.1% compared with a mere 0.1% decrease in June. Domestic traffic is down over 8% while North Atlantic traffic is down 0.6%. Of most concern is that cross-border EU traffic is down for the first time this year, by 0.6%.

Source: AEA

The only regions reporting greater than 5% growth were South Atlantic (+9.3%) and Middle East (+12.5%). In July AEA member airlines had increased capacity (ASKs) by 3.5% but traffic (RPKs) had only grown by 1.2%. As a result load factors fell 1.8 points from 81.7% in July 2007 to 79.9% this July.

Source: AEA

In July six of the Big 9 reported a drop in passengers with SAS and Lufthansa the latest to join the list. Only KLM, Swiss and Turkish reported a year-on-year increase in passengers in July.

Source: AEA

Load factors improved in July compared with June for all airlines except British Airways. Alitalia’s load factor was just over 75% but was still the lowest among the Big 9. Yet again KLM had the highest load factor though Swiss is now its nearest challenger.

Source: AEA

In July six of the nine medium-sized carriers reported lower passenger numbers than a year ago. Austrian was the latest airline to see growth come to a halt. CSA, TAP and Tarom are now the only airlines in this category reporting passenger growth though none exceeded the 10% mark.

Source: AEA

Load factors improved in July compared to June for all airlines except LOT. CSA and Tarom failed to reach a 70% load factor possibly due to their on-going growth. All of these airlines reported lower loads than in July 2007 with one notable exception. Olympic reported a 6.1 percentage point improvement in load factor to 81.7%, giving it the highest load factor among the medium-sized flag-carriers examined.