The Qantas Group saw a 9.1 per cent increase in passenger numbers across its operations during July as capacity also rose significantly and international yield rebounded strongly.
Across the total Qantas Group, revenue passenger kilometres increased by 6.9 per cent, while capacity increased by 7.5 per cent. As a result, there was a slight decline in load factor to 82.5 per cent.
On domestic services, Qantas saw a 5.1 per cent increase in passengers, while a capacity increase of 6.2 per cent resulted in load factor slipping by 0.4 percentage points to 83.1 per cent. QantasLink services saw an 11.7 per cent increase in passengers, although it also recorded a 0.4 percentage point decrease in load factor to 71 per cent. Jetstar recorded an 8.6 per cent increase in domestic passengers as capacity surged by 13.9 per cent, while load factor decreased by 0.8 points to 80.8 per cent.
International services were stronger, with Qantas recording a 2.7 per cent increase in passengers carried, although load factor was down slightly at 84.8 per cent as capacity growth of 1.2 per cent outstripped RPK growth of 0.3 per cent. By comparison, Jetstar saw a 1.4 percentage point increase in load factor to 76.6 per cent as RPKs increased by 26.5 per cent while capacity increased by 24.3 per cent.
Qantas noted that Group yield excluding foreign exchange was down by 1.3 per cent compared to the prior year, while international yield increased by a very healthy 11.4 per cent.
