Passenger traffic across the Virgin Blue group continued to rise in August, mainly on the back of the growth provided by the start of operations earlier this year by its long-haul subsidiary V Australia.
Domestic RPKs fell by 1% in August with total passenger numbers decreasing by 3% to 1.2 million, says the Australian carrier. International RPKs, however, increased by 205% as the number of passengers carried increased 42% to 205,000.
RPKs across the entire Virgin Blue network increased 26%, and the number of passengers carried was 2% higher at 1.5 million. Capacity, as measured by ASKs, increased by 27% while the load factor was 1.2 percentage points lower at 77.8%.
Apart from Virgin Blue and V Australia, the group includes New Zealand-based Pacific Blue and Polynesian Blue.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news