But fall in premium eases substantially
British Airways today (December 3) reported a 4.3% drop in traffic for November compared with the same month last year.
But the carrier said that premium traffic in the month fell just 1.7% compared with last year.
BA said that in the premium cabins, "the trend highlighted at the half-year results continued in November with Club World traffic up 1.5% and Club Europe down 20% on last year".
The airline said long haul premium traffic was showing signs of improvement with "volumes above the levels of last year and yields improving."
BA said that non-premium traffic dropped in November by 4.8% compared with last year.
Although short haul premium traffic has slumped by 20% by since last year, BA said volumes and yields in short haul were "stable".
With capacity down 6.2% compared with November 2008, BA said its load factor had risen by 1.5% to 75.9%.
Figures from the airline showed that in the recession, its markets in Asia Pacific had been the hardest hit.
In the eight months since the start of the airline's financial year in April, passenger numbers has dropped 16.4%, revenue by 14.9% and capacity by 16.8%.
In November the figures were down, respectively by 23.2%, 22.8% and 30.4% compared with the dame month in 2008.
Other markets had held up much better with the Europe market showing a slight fall while both the North America and Africa Middle East markets now improving.
www.ba.com