Weak economy affects Austrian’s traffic result

Due to the general weakness in economic cycles overall capacity of the Austrian Airlines Group fell slightly in September, by 1.0 percentage points to reach 78.1%. In total, around 1.02 million passengers were carried in the scheduled and charter segment, 4.0% fewer than last year. The general financial and economic crisis is also expected to have effects on the aviation industry in months to come.

After the first half of the year, that was strong in growth, general weakness in the economic cycle became more evident in the third quarter. A total of 3.2 million passengers were carried, a reduction of 3.1%. A comparison of the different traffic regions shows that only the Focus East region (CEE and the Middle East) reported the strongest growth with a slight rise by 0.3%.

The total number of passengers carried in the period from January to September was around 8.4 million (scheduled and charter), a slight increase of 0.2%. At 75.9%, the passenger load factor remained at the same level as the previous year. On scheduled services, the company achieved an increase of 1.3% in the number of passengers carried overall. The reduction in the number of passengers carried on long-haul flights of 9.3%, which was in line with the company’s restructuring plan, was balanced out by a strong increase, of 8.2% in the number of passengers carried in Focus East regions.