Swiss International Air Lines’ annual passenger numbers exceeded 16 million for the first time last year.

All in all, some 16,169,411 passengers were transported, a 1.3 per cent increase on the 15,968,833 of 2013.

The result was achieved with 1.6 per cent fewer flights, too: 144,116, compared to the 146,436 of the previous year.

Of these, 125,901 (down 2.2 per cent) were within Europe, and 18,215 (up 2.9 per cent) were on intercontinental routes.   

System wide, SWISS raised its annual available seat-kilometre capacity by 1.8 per cent in 2014.

Total traffic volume, measured in revenue passenger-kilometres, also increased by 1.8 per cent.

On its European network Swiss increased ASK capacity by 0.1 per cent while RPK traffic volume rose two per cent; and on its intercontinental services ASK capacity was raised 2.6 per cent while RPK traffic volume was up 1.7 per cent.

Seat load factor for Swiss’s intercontinental services amounted to 86.5 per cent for the year, down 0.8 percentage points from the 87.3 per cent of 2013.

Seat load factor for the European network was raised 1.4 percentage points, from the 76.2 per cent of 2013 to 77.6 per cent.

System wide seat load factor was unchanged at 83.7 per cent.

SWISS will be presenting its 2014 financial results on March 12th.