Air France - KLM July Traffic, Capacity Rise, Domestic Capacity Down; Stock Dips

(RTTNews) - Franco-Dutch airline Air France - KLM (AFLYY.PK, AFRAF.PK) reported Friday a 1.9 percent improvement in traffic, with a 1.5 percent increase in capacity for the month of July 2014. Meanwhile, the company reported continued reduction of domestic France point-to-point capacity, with a 7.2 percent decline. The shares are trading around 2 percent lower in Paris.

The company added that unit revenue per available seat kilometer or RASK ex-currency was down compared to July 2013, affected by industry over-capacity on North America and Asia routes.

In the month, the company carried 7.489 million passengers in the month, a growth of 1.3 percent from last year's 7.396 million.

Traffic in July, measured in terms of revenue pax-kilometers or RPK, grew to 22.28 billion, from 21.85 billion RPKs last year with growth in all regions.

Available seat-kilometers or ASK, a gauge for capacity, increased to 25.37 billion, from 24.99 billion ASKs last year, despite weak performance by Africa/Middle East region and short and medium haul business.

The monthly load factor increased 0.4 percentage points to 87.8 percent from 87.4 percent reported a year ago, despite a slight decline in long-houl load factor.

In the long haul, Americas' load factor declined 2.1 percentage points, despite higher traffic, capacity and passenger numbers.

In Cargo, capacity dropped 0.5 percent, traffic declined 0.9 percent, and load factor was down 0.3 percentage points to 59.4 percent reflecting lower results at Asia / Pacific and Africa / Middle East regions.

In Paris, Air France - KLM shares were losing 0.18 euros or 2.41 percent, and trading at 7.12 euros.