Czech Airlines carried 6% more passengers over the first six months of 2006 - compared to 2005.A total of 2.46 million passengers - i.e. 140,000 more than in the same period last year - travelled with the national carrier in the first half of the year. Scheduled service, where 2.15 million passengers were carried, was the greatest contributor to Czech Airlines’ traffic results. This was a 3% year-on-year increase. The share of all passengers flying out of the Prague Airport that chose Czech Airlines was stable at 48% in the first half of the year.Thus, Czech Airlines maintained its dominant position on the air traffic market in the Czech Republic.

“In the recent period, we particularly focused on stabilizing our number of destinations and on increasing the utilization of the available capacity. As such, it became obvious that the individual routes required a detailed analysis in order to be able to flexibly react to changing market situations,” ?SA Vice President for Marketing and Product Development, Marie Macounová, commented on the results. She added: “The existing results show that our decision to boost traffic primarily to destinations in Russia and other Eastern European countries was the right one. Russia is already our second most important foreign market in terms of revenues as well as in the number of passengers carried.”

With the introduction of its summer flight schedule, Czech Airlines is now able to offer its customers a new service to Odessa in the Ukraine. After just three months of operation, this route is already showing very promising results. Czech Airlines has also strengthened its position in routes to Croatia, Slovenia, Poland and Greece.

Czech Airlines has also witnessed an increase in the transportation of goods and mail, with these traffic volumes rising by 3.6% to more than 10,000 tons, in comparison to the same period last year.
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