KEY POINTS:
Air New Zealand's strong yield performance - which has helped the share price to record highs in the past few months - hit some turbulence in May as the airline had to offer cheaper deals on more seats to maintain passenger numbers.
May was traditionally a challenge and this year was no exception, the airline said as part of its monthly traffic update to the stock exchange.
"The strong yield performance evident through to April has not continued into May," it said, and there was "significant promotional activity" across all routes.
The news prompted some profit taking by investors and the shares fell 7c from Tuesday's high of $3.12.
Year-to-date yields were still 8.5 per cent higher across the group compared with same period last year, and long and short-haul yields were up 9.6 per cent and 8 per cent respectively. Yields were also 9.6 per cent higher in the 10 months to April than a year earlier.
During May, passenger load factor - the measure of how full planes were - was 72.4 per cent, an increase of 5.6 percentage points on May last year. Tasman and Pacific Island services in particular operated with significantly improved passenger load factor from 2006.
International long-haul traffic was also higher on a same-month com-parison with 2006, with 121,000 passengers carried in May, an increase of 19,000 passengers, or 18 per cent.
Air New Zealand also announced it would increase the number of Pacific Premium Economy seats on its B747 fleet a second time to 39.
