The traffic trend of the Austrian Airlines Group in the first half of June continued to feel the effects of the global economic downturn and the consequences of the SARS breakout, whereas in the second half of the month a slight recovery was noticeable. With flights reduced by 8.3 %, a total of 791,223 passengers was carried by the Group - a figure which was 9.5 % down on the comparable month the previous year. The average passenger load factor on scheduled services was 71.9 %, compared to 66.5 % in May.

The cumulative traffic statistics for January to June 2003 show a 5.8 % fall in the number of passengers to 3,847,698. The charter segment continued to grow during this period, by 1.3 %, while scheduled services carried 7.0 % fewer passengers than in the comparable period last year. At 66.0 %, the load factor on scheduled services was 2.6 percentage points lower than the figure for the previous year. In the first six months of 2003, the Group provided a total of 69,534 flights, 4.2 % fewer than were made from January to June 2002.

——-