In September, airberlin confirmed the ongoing trend and was able to increase the capacity utilization of its flights. For September 2013, capacity utilization throughout airberlin's flight network reached 87.26 percent, thereby exceeding the figure for the corresponding period of the previous year. In total, airberlin welcomed more than 3,309,554 passengers on board in September.
In the months from January to September 2013, Germany's second-largest airline company was able to increase fleet capacity utilization to the strong value of 85.60 percent, i.e. by two percentage points in yearly comparison, and welcomed more than 24.696 million passengers on board. The available seat kilometers (ASK) totaled 44.204 billion kilometers and the revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) amounted to 37.840 billion.
In the course of its flight plan optimization, airberlin is concentrating on increasing flight frequencies on well-established routes and has reduced the available seat kilometers in September 2013 by five percent in yearly comparison to 5.607 billion (previous year: 5.901 billion). Due to the increased capacity utilization, the revenue passenger kilometers only decreased by 4.7 percent to 4.893 billion (previous year: 5.136 billion).
For 2013, airberlin has changed the way it calculates its capacity utilization. The capacity utilization calculation is now determined according to the sector standard, and the revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) are compared to the available seat kilometers (ASK). For the purpose of a yearly comparison, the capacity utilization for 2012 was likewise calculated anew.
