Air China: Management discussion of Sep-2010 operating data
13-Oct-2010 In September, Air China saw a continued solid up-trend in traffic in all markets. While traffic softened on a month-over-month basis, the Company saw the strongest performance on a quarter-over-quarter basis in the third quarter.
For the cargo business, freighter tonnage carried and cargo & mail traffic for international routes continued to record rapid growth year-over-year, while domestic and regional routes both experienced a slight decrease. On a month-over-month basis, there was across-the-board growth in all markets.
Passenger capacity, measured in Available Seat Kilometers (ASK), grew 13.1% year-over-year. Passenger traffic, measured by Revenue Passenger Kilometers (RPK), rose by 21.1% in September. Capacity on international routes increased by 17.8% year-over-year, with RPK up 15.9%. Capacity on domestic and regional routes increased by 10.0% and 17.1% year-over-year, respectively, while RPK rose by 24.2% and 29.9%, respectively. The passenger load factor was 82.1%, up 5.5 percentage points year-over-year. The passenger load factor for domestic and regional routes improved by 9.4 and 7.3 percentage points year-over-year, respectively, while the passenger load factors for international routes slightly decreased by 1.3 percentage points. (Please note that Shenzhen Airlines and Air Macau numbers are not included in these figures.)
Cargo capacity, measured in Available Freighter Tonne Kilometres (AFTK), rose by 15.6% year-over-year. RFTK and Freighter tonnage carried increased by 19.6% and 7.8%, respectively, compared with the same month in 2009. In September, the cargo load factor improved to 63.6%, an increase of 2.1 percentage points year-over-year.