Air NZ passenger numbers up

Air New Zealand carried 883,000 passengers in May, up 3.9 per cent on the same month last year.

Poor weather caused a number of operational challenges during May, resulting in 85.5 per cent of domestic flights departing within 10 minutes of scheduled departure time, the airline said in an operating update.

It reduced capacity on Tasman and Pacific route by 3 per cent in response to a 1.1 per cent decrease in demand. As a result the trans-Tasman load factor, a measure of how full flights are, rose 1.5 percentage points to 78.3 per cent in May from a year ago.

The group load factor increased by 1.9 percentage points from a year-ago.

Short haul passenger numbers rose 4.2 per cent and long haul passenger numbers rose 1.9 per cent. The load factor on short haul flights was 80.1 per cent, while on long haul it was 71.9 per cent.

Group-wide yields for the financial year to date were down 7.9 per cent on the same period last year. Removing the impact of foreign exchange, group-wide yields were down 5.9 per cent.

- NZPA