Premium cabin traffic outperformed economy sales last month for British Airways’ owner IAG.
IAG, which also owns struggling Spanish carrier Iberia, said that overall traffic was down 5.6 per cent in April, as measured by revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), while capacity was reduced by 2.9 per cent during the month.
Despite this overall fall, IAG's premium traffic rose by 1.8 per cent in April although this was more than offset by a 6.9 per cent fall in economy traffic during the month.
IAG said in a statement: “Traffic and load factor were affected by Easter and a group policy to improve unit revenues through yield, rather than load.
“To look through the Easter effect, it is necessary to aggregate March and April. In doing so, load factor reduction was 0.6 points, premium traffic increased by 0.6 per cent and non-premium traffic decreased by 3.2 per cent.”
British Airways continues to perform strongly for IAG with traffic up by 3.9 per cent for the first four months of 2013 – this rise contrasts with a 16.3 per cent fall in traffic for Iberia as the airline has cut capacity by 12.4 per cent over the same period.
ba.com