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Air France: April 2002 Traffic in Line with Forecast

- Traffic down 3.3%, capacity drops 1.6%, load factor at 77.9% AND Substantial increase in RASK (excluding currency effect)
In April, the first month of the summer schedule, the Easter holidays (in March the previous year) and spring school vacation had a considerable impact on traffic, particularly domestic traffic:

Capacity: down 1.6% in ASK (available seat-km) - Traffic: down 3.3% in RPK (revenue passenger-km) - Load factor: 77.9% (down 1.4 points)

On the other hand, unit revenues both for available seat kilometers and revenue passenger kilometers have shown a significant increase.
The regional sector, included in the statistics for the first time, posted a good performance in April (load factor: 61.1% up 0.5 points).
In April, long-haul traffic decreased 2.5% for a 1.4% drop in capacity. The load factor remained at the high level of 81.1% (down 0.9 points).
On North American routes, capacity was cut by 13.9% while traffic fell 11.9%, leading to a 1.8-point improvement in the load factor to 80.1%.
Capacity in Latin America slipped 6.9% and traffic 7.2%. The load factor remained
stable at 77.9% (down 0.3 points).

On the Asian network, both traffic and capacity posted a strong performance, with a 9.0% and 2.8% increase respectively. The load factor also gained 4.8 points, reaching 84.0%.
On the Africa/Middle-East network, traffic jumped 31.2% and capacity 44.6%. The load factor stood at 72.7%, down 7.4 points. The arrival of large-capacity aircraft (such as the B747- 400) on this network explains this drop in load factor. However, it generates a substantial reduction in unit costs.

Caribbean/Indian Ocean routes slipped 5.3% in capacity and 10.9% in traffic. The load factor remained at the high level of 84.2% (down 5.3 points).

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Activity in April on the European network was satisfactory, with traffic down 3.6%, in line with capacity (down 3.5%). The load factor remained stable at 70.6% (down 0.1 point).
Traffic on the domestic network posted a sharp decrease (down 9.6%) mainly due to the effect of Easter holidays and spring school vacation, while capacity remained stable (up 0.2%). The load factor dropped 7.1 points to 65.4%.
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