Some 5.7% fewer passengers were carried by Air New Zealand last month than it did in April last year when the holiday season fell in March. The drop in number of passesngers happened even when an Easter boost has been counted.

However after cutting its capacity by 12.7%, the airline’s passenger load factor was increased by 4.5%     points. In the month of April Air New Zealand carried 971,000 passengers.

Due to swine flu fears there have been a number of passenger cancellations, mainly on Japanese routes. The airline officials said that the financial impact on Air New Zealand is not material yet.

With 4.7% fewer short haul passengers compared to a 12% decline in long haul numbers, short haul passenger numbers held up better than long haul.

On a 7.3% reduction in capacity, short haul load factors also improved by 5.2% points (led by the Tasman/Pacific market).

Long haul capacity was reduced by 16.3% however passenger load factor raised by just 3.9% points.

As compared to the Asian/Japanese/UK routes (down by 14.2%) Passenger numbers were more flexible on North American/UK routes (falling by 9.0%).

(via TopNews New Zealand. Contributed by Kohia Dennison)