The Qantas Group's passenger traffic grew by 1.2% in the six months to 31 December 2009, with growth at low-cost carrier Jetstar helping to overcome falling traffic at the flagship full-service carrier.

Qantas Airways' domestic RPKs fell 0.1%, Qantaslink's RPKs were down 3.5% and RPKs for its international services were 8.9% lower. In real terms, the total number of passengers carried domestically increased 0.6% to 8.6 million and was up 0.9% to 2.2 million at Qantaslink. On the international segment, however, the number fell 22% to 3 million.

Capacity, as measured by ASKs, fell 3.5% in the domestic market, 2.1% for Qantaslink and 12.7% for international services. As a result, the revenue seat factor increased 2.8 percentage points to 83% on the domestic services, decreased by one percentage point to 69.7% for Qantaslink, and increased 3.5 percentage points to 84.1% for international services.

Jetstar's domestic RPKs increased 3.3%, with the actual number of passengers carried growing 2.7% to 4.3 million, and ASKs falling by 0.1%. The domestic revenue seat factor was up 2.7 percentage points to 83.6%.

The low-cost carrier's international RPKs increased 40.2%, the number of passengers carried went up 107.4% to 1.97 million, and ASKs increased 34.9%. The revenue seat factor increased 2.9 percentage points to 77.6%.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news