Dutch airline KLM today announced it was adding flights to its summer schedule and edging closer to regaining levels of passenger capacity seen before the September 11th attacks hit demand.
Europe's fourth largest airline said its summer flight schedule was using 95 per cent of the passenger flight capacity available last summer, prior to the attacks in the US.
KLM has said its utilised capacity in the current autumn-winter period from September to March was an estimated 90 per cent of the level in the year-ago period.
Passenger volume has recovered since the post-September 11th crisis and is traditionally higher in summer than it is in winter, KLM said in a statement, pushing its shares and those of partner British Airways higher.
Analysts said the news was not a complete surprise.
"If we look at the monthly traffic statistics of KLM and the weekly traffic statistics of the Association of European Airlines (AEA), we already noted a strong increase in passenger traffic since September 11th," SNS Securities analyst Mr Geert-Jan Hoppers said in a note.
The AEA last week reported that passenger figures rose 4.5 per cent from a year earlier in the week ended February 10th compared with a 6.5 per cent posted in the week to February 3rd.
Like other European airlines, KLM cut its schedules after the September 11th attacks but it was among the first airlines which said in January that it had seen signs of a market revival and planned no more capacity or job cuts.