August traffic data (= more sign of relief?)

Japan Airlines has just released the traffic data for August 2009. Even the overall passenger numbers do drop year over year, the international passenger load factor actually improves due to the shift to smaller aircraft and route suspensions and frequency reductions.

The overall JAL international passenger load factor improves from 69.3% to 75.5% from a year ago. The most impressive improvement are the China and Europe networks. Even though there are less seats provided in both networks, the numbers of passengers increase compare to last year. The China network sees a 35.5% increase in number of passenger and the load factor increases from 42.1% to 68%. That's almost 26% improvement!!! The Europe network also sees almost 10% improvement in load factor while other networks remains more or less the same.

However the domestic numbers are still a bit worrying. JAL continue to see drops in everything: load factor, passenger carried, etc. But at least when compared to last month's data, the year to year drop narrowed from 10% to 2% in load factor. The Cargo data is even worse and JAL see double digit drop in everything except in domestic mail.

I am no financial analyst but I do feel there are some signs of relief, at least on the passenger side (at least if I interpret the data correctly :P). Hopefully merging cargo operation with NCA will fix the problems on the cargo side. Looks like the rumor about growth in September international passengers and profitable July-September quarter MIGHT actually be true! Fingers crossed.

Source: JAL Press Release