British Airways passenger traffic increases

British Airways Plc, Europe's second-biggest airline, said on Thursday its April passenger traffic increased by 16.1 percent on the recovery in travel demand after the Iraq war and Sars virus last year.
The carrier said however underlying market conditions were unchanged, with lucrative long-haul first and business class passenger volumes still above last year's levels but non-premium passenger volumes remaining "very sensitive" to ticket prices.
George Stinnes, BA's head of industrial relations, told reporters on a conference call that first and business class passenger volumes were still below levels of two years ago. BA said its passenger load factor, which measures the number of seats filled as a percentage of available capacity, was 75.5 percent in April, up 6.2 points from the same month last year.
BA lost its mantle as Europe's biggest airline this week when Air France, won 90 percent of its Dutch rival KLM in the first cross-border merger of major airlines.