IAG’s overall passenger traffic fell in February due to the effects of the first five-day strike by Iberia workers.
The company, which also owns British Airways, said that total traffic last month fell by 2.4 per cent, as measured by revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs).
Iberia’s traffic fell by 20.6 per cent in February – mainly due to the strike by cabin crew and ground workers – while BA saw a 5.3 per cent rise in RPKs during the month. Iberia workers are currently holding their second five-day stoppage this week with another planned later this month.
Despite Iberia’s woes, IAG still carried 3.6 million passengers in February which was up by 1.4 per cent on the same month in 2012 with BA accounting for 75 per cent of RPKs and total capacity.
Meanwhile Easyjet saw its passenger numbers rise by 3.4 per cent to 4.1 million in February while load factors grew by 2.9 percentage points to 90.5 per cent.
No-frills rival Ryanair said that passenger numbers had fallen 6 per cent in February to 4.2 million but load factors had improved by one point to 77 per cent. Although traffic only fell by 3 per cent on an adjusted basis due to 2012 being a leap year with 29 days in February.