Qantas traffic up in August

Qantas Airways Ltd, the world's ninth biggest airline by market value, said August group passenger traffic was up 4.2 percent, but its full-service domestic carrier suffered as the budget airlines boomed.
Qantas said group seat load factor, which measures how successfully it fills the seats on its in aircraft, was 75.2 percent, up 1.1 percentage points on a year ago.
But its full-service domestic carrier, competing against its own budget airline Jetstar and budget rival Virgin Blue, had a 3.4 percent fall in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs), an industry standard which measures seats sold and distance flown.
Jetstar's revenue passenger kilometres soared 41.6 percent.
The number of passengers Qantas' full-service domestic airline carried was down 5.3 percent to 1.34 million. Jetstar had a 26.2 percent rise in passengers carried to 405,000.