Air New Zealand is blaming swine flu after a 24.7% fall in passenger numbers on its Asia/Japan/Britain routes in June, compared to a year earlier.
Altogether the airline carried 1.1 million passengers last month, down 5.5% on June 2008.
But with the airline’s capacity down 12.3%, its passenger load factor rose two percentage points to 79.5%.
For all long haul routes passenger numbers were down 14% to 148,000, while the load factor rose 1.2 points to 82%.
Even on the hard hit Asian routes, the load factor lifted 0.5 points to 78.8% as capacity fell 23.6%.
Influenza A (H1N1) had continued to soften demand out of Japan, while capacity was reduced by combining flights from Osaka and Tokyo into a single flight, Air New Zealand said.
On the North America/Britain routes passenger numbers fell 7.1% to 92,000, as load factor rose 1.4 points to 84%.
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On domestic routes passenger numbers were down three percent to 719,000, with load factor up 2.6 points to 75%.
Tasman/Pacific routes had a 7.3% fall in passengers to 241,000, while the passenger load factor gained 3.8 points to 76.7%.
