October 9 (SeeNews) - Croatia Airlines, the country's flag carrier, posted a 3.2% annual drop in the number of passengers it carried in the first eight months of the year to 1.165 million, the Association of European Airlines (AEA) said on Friday.
The carrier's passenger load factor through August was 61.2%, down 4.5 percentage points from a year earlier, AEA said in its latest traffic and capacity data report.
In August alone, Croatia Airlines boarded 203,300 passengers, up 0.4% from a year earlier. The passenger load factor for the month was 73%, 2.2 percentage points lower than August 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.