Air NZ long-haul passenger numbers fall

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 1 Comment

Air New Zealand, whose chief executive Rob Fyfe will leave at the end of the year, reported a 4.3 percent decline in long-haul passenger numbers last month.

Long-haul total passengers carried fell to 149,000 in January from 156,000 in the same month a year earlier, with a 5.5 percent decline passengers on the North America/UK route to 88,000 and a 2.7 percent fall in numbers on the Asia/Japan/UK route to 62,000.

The airline blamed the impact from the Canterbury and Japan earthquakes for declining numbers of Japanese routes.

The shares fell 3.4 percent to a month-low 86.5 cents in trading today.

Domestic passenger numbers were flat at 583,000, while Tasman/Pacific numbers fell 1.4 percent to 248,000. The group’s passenger numbers fell 1 percent to 980,000 in the month, and were down 0.7 percent to 7.73 million in the financial year-to-date.

Auckland-based Air New Zealand told analysts and investors in November it’s aiming for a $110 million profit improvement by 2015 from long-haul flights, which are now an under-performing part of the company.

Total revenue passenger kilometres fell 1.3 percent to 2,334 million, while capacity, or available seat kilometres was flag at 2.71 million.

(BusinessDesk)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

On 22 February 2012 at 1:18 pm duncan said:

That'll be because they want nearly $4K to fly to the UK at Christmas