The Lufthansa-owned airline carried 1,036,000 passengers last month, with scheduled traffic within Europe up 1.4% and intercontinental passengers increasing 1%.
Load factors rose by 3.7 percentage points to 75%, while capacity measured by Available Seat Kilometres (ASKs) decreased by 4.4 points which the airline attributed to its reducing its fleet by two aircraft. Traffic figures for January-March, revealed the airline has seen an 8% growth in traffic since the beginning of the year.
"The result is a strong proof that customers trust and believe in the service and the product of Austrian Airlines," said CCO Karsten Benz.
However, Austrian’s charter operations were scaled back, with ASKs reduced by 11.5% and charter traffic down 5.7% to 45,400.
In March, Austrian announced it had suffered a €59.4 million loss in 2011 and due to to growth restrictions imposed by the EU on Austrian’s growth followings its merger with Lufthansa, Austrian is seeking to switch capacity from charter to scheduled said airline spokesperson Michael Braun.
