SAS reports passenger numbers up 0.3% in February 2005

Airline Industry Information, March 7, 2005

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Scandinavian airline group SAS reported on Monday (7 March) that its number of transported passengers had increased by 0.3% year-on-year to 2.3m passengers in February 2005.

Total passenger traffic (RPK) in February had increased by 0.8%, according to SAS, while capacity (ASK) increased by 4.2%.

Overall group passenger load decreased by 1.9 percentage points to 57.2% in February 2005, as compared to February 2004.

SAS said that yields were up by 2% in January 2005, as compared to January 2004, but were expected to be flat or slightly positive in February 2005.

SAS Group European routes continued to stabilize in February with a traffic increase of 9.4% while cabin factor was flat.

SAS Braathens' traffic increased by 1.0%, while Spanair's traffic increased by 14.4%. Swedish domestic routes continued to be weak due to severe overcapacity on many routes, while the passenger numbers of SAS's Finnish subsidiary Blue1 were up by 42.4%.

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