Asian operations lift Finnair’s load factor

HELSINKI - Nordic carrier Finnair has reported a 76.8 percent passenger load factor for the first five months of this year, thanks to a robust revival in the Asian market, notably India.

The passenger load factor for the carrier from Asia was the highest for any sector at 80.9, where India, to which the airline flies six days a week to capital city New Delhi from here, was a major contributor.

“It’s excellent that demand returned after the problems of April,” Finnair senior vice president Christer Haglund said in a statement. “Scheduled traffic demand and the passenger load factor are again moving in the right direction.”

Among the carrier’s other sectors, the passenger load factor for January-May period was 65.7 percent for Europe, 76.1 percent for North Atlantic and 59.8 percent for domestic.

Load factor refers to number of actual passengers flown for every 100 seats.

For India — to which the carrier has deployed its latest fleet, with an average age of no more than six months — the passenger load factor for the first three months was 91 percent, 84 percent and over 95 percent, respectively.