KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 3): AirAsia Bhd, Asia's largest budget airline by fleet, carried 14% more passengers in the second quarter of 2017 (2Q17), with seating capacity up 11% year-on-year (y-o-y).

It flew 15.81 million passengers in 2Q17 over the 13.91 million passengers flown in 2Q16.

The seat load factor improved accordingly, rising 3 percentage points (ppts) to 88%, compared with the year-ago period.

The available seat kilometers, a measure of passenger capacity, were also up 9% y-o-y, while passenger traffic, measured by revenue passenger kilometres, rose 12% y-o-y.

As at June 30, 2017, the airline’s total fleet size stood at 178 aircraft. This excludes two aircraft that have been delivered to AirAsia Japan, but yet to commence operation.

Taking into account its Malaysian, Indonesian and the Philippines operations alone, AirAsia carried 10% more passengers to 9.61 million in 2Q17, from 8.73 million in 2Q16, while capacity rose 8%. 

In a statement today, AirAsia attributed the higher number of passengers carried to a strong demand for air travel, which led to an improvement of its seat load factor by 2 ppts to 89% in 2Q17.

The three markets ended the second quarter with a fleet size of 106 aircraft, comprising 77 registered in Malaysia, 14 in Indonesia and 15 in the Philippines. 

Meanwhile, AirAsia reported the number of passengers Thai AirAsia carried increased 13% y-o-y to 4.69 million, which was higher than the 9% growth in seat capacity.

Its load factor also rose 3 ppts to 86% in 2Q17.

AirAsia India also saw the number of passengers flown rise 89% y-o-y to 1.01 million in 2Q17, on the back of an 83% increase in capacity. 

Load factor was up by 3 ppts to 90%.

At 2.28pm, AirAsia shares were down 2 sen or 0.61% at RM3.24, with 2.66 million shares traded, for a market capitalisation of RM10.8 billion.