Air NZ’s February passenger volume rises 6.9%

Air NZ’s February passenger volume rises 6.9%, load factor little changed

March 23 (BusinessDesk) - Air New Zealand Ltd. said it carried 6.9% more passengers in February than in the same month of 2010, reflecting a pick-up in volumes on domestic, trans-Tasman and Pacific flights.

The national airline carried 1.1 million passengers last month, up from 997,000 a year earlier, according to its monthly operating statistics. Revenue passenger kilometers rose 6.6% and capacity, or available seat kilometers, gained 6.5%. The load factor edged up 0.1 percentage point.

Air New Zealand said last week that the combined impact of the Christchurch and Japanese earthquakes, and rising fuel costs will wipe out profit in the second half of its financial year. The uncertain impact of natural disasters and higher costs prompted Moody’s Investors Service to lower the outlook on the airline’s ‘Baa3’ credit rating to ‘negative’ this week.

In February, total short-haul passenger numbers rose 7.7%. Domestic climbed 5.9% to 700,000, while on Tasman and Pacific routes the volume gained 13.7% to 223,000.

Long-haul passengers rose 2.1% to 143,000. On North America/U.K. routes the volume gained 3.7% to 85,000 while numbers on Asia/Japan/U.K. routes fell 0.2% to 58,000.

The airline’s shares were unchanged today at $1.10 and have dropped 26% so far this year.

(BusinessDesk)

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