BA traffic falls 7.3%

BRITISH Airways suffered a sharp fall in business and first-class traffic last month, it reported yesterday.

DROP British airways traffic has dropped DROP: British airways traffic has dropped

Premium traffic saw a 13 per cent drop in March, while economy class traffic fell by 6 per cent.

Total traffic was down 7.3 per cent and the number of flights with all seats filled dropped from 79.1 per cent to 72.7 per cent. Total passenger numbers fell more than 8 per cent to 2.6million.

BA said market conditions remained challenging with passenger numbers and fares under pressure across all its markets

The company recently warned investors that it was heading for a £150million loss in the current financial year, before redundancy costs of £75million.

In its traffic update it said weakness in demand was likely to hit annual revenues by up to £25million.

Earlier, BA said 300 staff had taken up its voluntary redundancy scheme.

A spokesman said talks on a possible merger with Spain’s Iberia continued. The two had been expected to announce a deal by the end of last month.

Budget airline Ryanair reported passenger numbers up 5 per cent to 4.7million in March.

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