KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) saw its passenger volume for the fourth quarter 2014 (4Q14) grow 11.7% to 1.09 million passengers from 973,285 in 4Q13.

For 4Q14, AAX’s (fundamental: 0; valuation: 0.3) passenger traffic grew 9.3% year-on-year (y-o-y) against 8.5% y-o-y increase in Available-Seat-KM (ASK) capacity, the company said in a statement yesterday.

Its 4Q14 revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) — which is the number of paying passengers carried on scheduled flights multiplied by the number of kilometers those seats were flown — also improved, growing by 9.3% to 5.31 million from 4.86 million.

Consequently, AAX said its load factor — which is RPK divided by ASK — improved by 0.5 percentage points to 81.4%, implying capacity injected during the peak quarter was well absorbed by demand arising from year-end holiday travel.

For the full year, its passenger volume grew by 33.8% y-o-y or 1.1 million passengers to 4.23 million passengers in financial year 2014 (FY14) from 3.16 million in FY13. Its RPK for the full year was at 20.82 million, up 31.3% from 15.86 million.

AAX attributed the improved operating statistics to stronger branding, enhanced customer experience and larger capacity at klia2.

“Capacity as measured by ASK increased by 31.4% y-o-y, with the introduction of new routes — Nagoya, Xian and Narita in 2014. Load factor for the full year remained healthy at 82% despite challenging market conditions,” AAX added.

During 4Q14, AAX said it had also taken delivery of two A330-300 on operating lease, bringing its total number of A330-300 to 23, together with two A340-300s (expected to be returned early second quarter of this year) and one A330-200 (expected to be returned by the first quarter of this year).

AAX said its fleet size for 4Q14 has expanded to 26 aircraft from 19 in the same period last year.

On its associates, AAX said Thai AirAsia X registered a strong load of 84.4% for its 4Q14, with 159,034 passengers carried, “showing faster-than-expected pickup for the popular routes between Thailand, Japan and South Korea”.

“Thai AirAsia X launched its inaugural flights to Incheon in July 2014, Osaka, Narita in September 2014, and recently added Sapporo as its third destination in Japan,” it noted.

Indonesia AirAsia X, it added, was set to start flying four times weekly from Denpasar to Taipei in March.

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on February 18, 2015.