Finnair Reports October 2009 Traffic

Finnair's scheduled traffic declined in October 2009 by nearly 11%, and capacity was cut by 12% compared with the same month last year, which improved the load factor by more than one percentage point to 78%.

"Capacity was optimally cut to match falling demand. Winter is expected to continue to be difficult, so further adjustments to traffic will be made. For leisure traffic in particular, the coming winter season will be tough. The decline in cargo traffic, however, currently appears to be over," said Finnair's SVP Communications Christer Haglund.

Asian traffic declined by 12% from October the previous year. A more than 13% capacity cut raised the load factor by more than one percentage point to 84%.

European traffic declined by nearly 10%. A 12% cut of capacity raised the load factor by two percentage points to more than 70%. In Finland both traffic and capacity were down by more than 12%. The load factor in domestic traffic was less than 60%.

North American traffic figures were nearly unchanged from last year: Traffic declined by almost 4% and capacity was cut by under 1%. Load factor fell by nearly three percentage points to 89%.

Leisure traffic declined in October by nearly 19% and capacity by more than 16%, so the leisure traffic load factor fell by over two percentage points to nearly 82%.

Finnair's traffic overall, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, declined by over 12% in October. Passenger numbers fell by slightly less than 12%. The amount of cargo carried in scheduled traffic, measured in tonnes, rose by more than 6%.

Of Finnair's flights, 87.6% arrived on schedule, which represents an improvement of 2.2 percentage points from last year. Scheduled traffic's punctuality percentage rose from October last year by 2.1 percentage points to 89.5%.

See recent travel news from: Travel News Asia, Finnair, Traffic, October 2009