Etihad Airways has enjoyed its busiest month ever with more than 616,000 passengers flying onboard the Abu Dhabi-based airline's flights during July, a nine percent increase on passenger numbers for July 2008. The highlight of the month was July 31 when a record 21,640 passengers, with a load factor of 90.3 percent, flew with Etihad making it the airline's busiest day in its five year history. The last week of July saw an average of more than 20,500 passengers fly aboard its planes each day. The month of July saw Etihad's 900 weekly flights – a 20 percent increase on the number of weekly flights operated in July 2008 – fly at an average of 88 percent full across first, business and economy cabins. James Hogan, Etihad Airways' chief executive, said: “The record-breaking passenger numbers we have experienced in July demonstrate that, despite the current economic challenges, Etihad continues to attract high volumes of traffic across all three cabins on our global network of more than 50 destinations. “While we expected July to be busy we are delighted to have beaten our previous records, especially during the final week of the month when we carried more than 20,500 passengers each day. We now look forward to building upon this for the remainder of the summer holiday period and into the Holy Month of Ramadan.” Etihad's flights to the Asia – Pacific region and also North America turned in particularly strong performances during July with seat factors averaging more than 86 percent. Within Europe, loads exceeded 82 percent and in the Middle East region it was 77 percent. Etihad introduced three new destinations in June – Larnaca in Cyprus, the Greek capital of Athens and Istanbul, Turkey's commercial capital – which all made an impact in July's successful passenger numbers. Etihad also continues to expand its flight network and will launch non-stop flights from its Abu Dhabi base to Chicago in September as well as the South African city of Cape Town. In addition to the record passenger numbers, Etihad also enjoyed its best July for on-time performance at Abu Dhabi airport with 90 percent of flights departing within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. This represents an improvement of five percentage points on the same period in 2008, despite a 21 percent increase in the airline's flying schedule. With high passenger numbers set to continue into August with the Holy Month of Ramadan also expected to begin, Etihad is advising customers to book their travel soon to avoid unnecessary disappointment.
