AUA reveals first half-year results

Austrian airline carrier AUA has admitted that between January and June the number of passengers fell by 3% to 5.3 million. In June it was 0.8% less than the same period the year before.

Although it is a reduction Austrian Airlines is not alone in seeing a reduction in the number of passenger numbers which has been a problem across the board.

The airline has been flying with less jets however and as a result the take-up rate on how full the planes are when underway has increased by 7.4%.

AUA board member Karsten Benz said that the company had axed unprofitable routes which was the reason that the planes were now flying closer to capacity than before. They said that they had also been re-equipping the cabins to make them more effective in catering for passenger numbers on certain routes.

In the period up until June AUA said that the number of long-distance passengers had fallen by 8.4% whereas flights within Europe had remained almost stable with a fall of simply 0.1%.

Austrian airlines is part of the group that includes Lufthansa, Germanwings, Swiss which in total notched up 49,463 million passengers in the first six months of the year.