Traffic increase for Austrian

Austrian Airlines has announced that it carried 5.37 million scheduled passengers on its short- and medium-haul routes in the first eight months of this year.

This is an 8.3 per cent increase on the January-August period of 2006.

In the month of August alone, Austrian saw passenger growth of eight per cent in the scheduled short- and medium-haul segment.

The load factor – the rate at which the carrier fills its planes – stood at 67.1 per cent in this sector, a 1.5 per cent rise on 2006.

On all scheduled and charter services, Austrian has carried 7.28 million passengers and achieved a load factor of 75.7 per cent this year, but chief executive officer Alfred Otsch stressed that the scheduled segment has seen the most success.

He said: "Scheduled flights, which account for around 86 per cent of our traffic, continue to grow strongly. This result is all the more pleasing because the strong growth in the short- and medium-haul segment almost compensated for the fully effective and planned reduction in long-haul.

"The positive passenger load factor figures in all segments confirm that we are on the right course."

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