September 11 (SeeNews) - Croatia Airlines, the country's flag carrier, posted a 3.9% annual drop in the number of passengers it carried in the first seven months of the year to 961,500, the Association of European Airlines (AEA) said.
The carrier's passenger load factor through July was 59.0%, down 4.9 percentage points from a year ago, AEA said in a report released on Thursday.
In July alone, Croatia Airlines boarded 202,400 passengers, 0.6% less than a year earlier. The passenger load factor for the month was 72%, 1.3 percentage points lower than July 2008.
AEA is the organisation of 34 European carriers which collectively carry 370 million passengers and 7 million tonnes of cargo each year. They operate 2,600 aircraft serving 615 destinations in 165 countries with 11,575 flights a day.