Data released by Qantas and Virgin Blue to the Australian Securities Exchange shows that both airlines recorded overall higher load factors during September, compared to the same time last year.
Collectively, the Qantas Group saw a 6.6 per cent increase in passengers, which lifted RPKs by 2.7 per cent, while load factor was 3.9 percentage points higher at 83.7 per cent. Qantas and Jetstar’s domestic services and QantasLink all saw increases in passenger numbers, while Qantas international services saw passenger numbers fall by 20.8 per cent, although capacity cuts saw load factor improve by 2.1 percentage points to 84.4 per cent. Jetstar international services also saw load factor improve by 3.4 points to 79.8 per cent.
The Virgin Blue group saw an overall increase in load factor of 1.7 percentage points to 81.1 per cent, with passenger numbers increasing by 3.1 per cent. Passenger numbers on domestic services decreased by 1.5 per cent as the carrier cut capacity by 4.9 per cent which helped boost domestic revenue load factor by 3.5 percentage points to 83.8 per cent. International services also saw an improvement in loads of 2.4 percentage points to 76.1 per cent.
