Air Transport

China Southern Airlines posted double-digit passenger growth in September but the passenger load factor on domestic routes dropped.

The Guangzhou-based carrier says RPKs in September rose 10% year-on-year with domestic RPKs rising 9%, regional up 29% and international increasing 19%.

In real terms the number of passengers rose 11% year-on-year to 5.49 million with domestic accounting for the bulk, up 10% to 5.06 million.

Regional passenger traffic rose 17% to 104,000 and international increased 12% to 326,000.

Even though the airline has posted double-digit growth, its overall passenger load factor fell four percentage points to 72.2%.

This is because the domestic passenger load factor fell 5.6 percentage points to 72.6% and this outweighed the 3.2% rise in regional passenger load factor to 65.3% and the 5.3 percentage point increase in international passenger load factor to 70.2%.

Earlier this year China Southern delayed the delivery of Boeing 777 freighters but now its freight business appears to be recovering.

In September, revenue freight tonne kilometres (RFTKs) rose 17% year-on-year.

The break-down shows domestic RFTKs rose 27%, regional 3% and international 2%.