Air New Zealand’s May traffic statistics continue to highlight the extreme weakness confronting airlines amid the coronavirus pandemic.
For the entire month, the airline carried just 67,000 passengers, down 94.8% from 1.3 million passengers in May 2019.
ASKs fell 92.8% year on year and RPKs 97.1%. The airline’s load factor in the month was 34.2%, down 50 percentage points from a year earlier.
The weakness in the airline’s network was evident across all segments. Traffic to Asia was particularly dismal, with 1,000 passengers carried on Asian segments, down 98.9% from a year earlier.
Air NZ’s domestic flights, while carrying over 90% few passengers this year, were able to generate a load factor of 49%, considerably greater than any other segment.
On 18 June, Air NZ said it would report an underlying loss of up to NZ$120 million ($77 million) for the year ending 30 June.
Separately, on 26 June Australia’s Perth Airport said that passenger numbers for May were 99% down from May 2019, with interstate passengers down 97%.
“The aviation sector was the first to be impacted by the coronavirus virus and it’s had a massive impact,” says Perth airport chief executive Kevin Brown.
“Airports, airlines and the myriad of companies that provide aviation support services have all suffered catastrophic losses of business and revenue and many people’s jobs have been directly impacted.”
