KEY POINTS:
Air New Zealand continues to experience strong growth in passenger numbers, its latest investor update shows.
However, it has increased its seating capacity even faster, leading to a slight drop in load factors for November. Load factors are the ratio of full seats to empty seats.
Total traffic for the group was 6.8 per cent higher than for November last year, at 2005 million revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs).
RPKs are a measure of every kilometre flown by a revenue-generating passenger (so excluding airline employees, babies and children).
Group capacity for the month was up by 9.2 per cent on the same month a year earlier. That resulted in a slight drop in passenger load factors - down by 1.7 per cent on the same period last year.
Domestic load factors were up by 1 per cent to 76 per cent. On the Tasman and Pacific Islands routes, the load factor increased 6.6 per cent to 73.3 per cent.
However, load factors were down 9.9 per cent on routes through Asia through to Britain. That was largely due to the new services to Shanghai and London, via Hong Kong. Demand on those services through peak season was strong and exceeding expectations, the company said.
The load factor on routes through North America to London was also down by 4.9 per cent.
Year-to-date group yields are up 12.2 per cent on 2005.
Air New Zealand shares closed down 1c at $1.86.
