British Airways and Iberia parent company, International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG), has reported a 3.5% increase in revenue passenger kilometres to 16.11 billion in July from 15.56 billion in the same period last year. British Airways traffic grew 6.2% to 11.22 billion RPKs, while Iberia airline traffic declined 2.2% to 4.89 billion RPKs.
Double digit growth in traffic to Latin America & Caribbean region by 10% and an 8.9% increase in Asia Pacific traffic helped pushed the overall figure up, even though domestic traffic numbers in Spain and the UK were down 20.9%.
Total capacity grew 2.9% to 18.80 billion from 18.28 billion in July 2010. Again figures were pushed up by growth in the Latin America & Caribbean region by 12.1% and 10.1% in Asia Pacific region. Capacity dropped 22.1% in the domestic region of U.K. and Spain. This fall in the domestic market also impacted the number of passengers carried, which fell 2.7% to 5.0 million from 5.14 million in July 2010.
Load factor rose only slightly to 85.7% from last year’s 85.1%.