Qantas international passenger numbers fell by 0.6 per cent in November compared to same month in 2009, as the airline felt the affects of grounding its Airbus A380 fleet for much of the month following the QF32 inflight uncontained engine failure emergency.
Qantas carried some 479,000 international passengers for the month, despite its six strong A380 fleet being out of action following the November 3 QF32 incident. By comparison, in October Qantas’s international operations carried 526,000 passengers (which was up 1.0 per cent on October 2009).
The slight fall in international passenger numbers came despite Qantas Group passenger numbers overall growing strongly for the month, up 7.7 per cent. RPKs were up by 3.3 per cent but capacity in ASKs grew an even faster 4.9 per cent, resulting in a 1.2 point drop in load factor to 81.1 per cent.
QantasLink (up 17.5 per cent), Jetstar domestic (up 12.6 per cent) and Qantas domestic (up 6.4 per cent) all recorded strong growth. Jetstar’s international operations recorded a 0.8 per cent traffic drop.
