• January to April: 2.1 percent increase in passenger volume
• April 2016: More flights, fewer passengers
In the period January to April 2016, Austrian Airlines transported more than 2.9 million passengers, a rise of 2.1 percent from the previous year. The flight offering in available seat kilometres (ASK) was increased by 4.0 percent to more than 6.9 billion, which is mainly due to the expanded bilateral flight traffic between Austria and Germany. Austrian Airlines sold close to five billion revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) in the first four months of the year, comprising a rise of 2.2 percent. During this period, capacity utilization of the flights (passenger load factor) was at an average of 72.1 percent, a slight decrease of 1.3 percent compared to the previous year.
In the month of April 2016 alone, capacity utilization (passenger load factor) of the Austrian Airlines flights averaged 74.5 percent. This represents a slight rise of 0.7 percentage points compared to April of 2015. On balance, Austria’s red-white-red carrier transported 921,000 passengers in April 2016, comprising a slight drop of 1.3 percent from the prior-year level. The decline is mainly attributable to two factors, namely the earlier Easter holidays in March, and the maintenance program carried out on the long-haul fleet which was extended into the month of April to ensure that all capacities can be deployed in the summer months. The flight offering measured in available seat kilometres (ASK) was reduced by 5.3 percent to about two billion. Revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) sold by Austrian Airlines fell by 4.4 percent to about 1.5 billion. The number of flights operated in April 2016 increased by 5.3 percent to a total of 11,460 flights.
