FRANCE. Air France’s July passenger traffic rose +2.9% year-on-year, following a -0.1% decline in June. The company attributed the turnaround to strong European bookings.
Air France said that with the exception of Asia, where the situation is still affected by SARS but is improving, July traffic reached substantially higher levels than last year.
Europe traffic rose +6.4% year-on-year with a load factor flat at 69.9%; Asia traffic fell -19.5% and showed a 3.6 point drop in load factor to 79.4%, against a group load factor that rose 1.4 points to 79.4%.
Excluding Asia, traffic increased by +8.9% for a 5.4% rise in capacity. Long-haul traffic as a whole rose +2.7% with a 1.6 point increase in load capacity to 83.3%.
