According to the data provided by Incheon International Airport Corp. and Korea Airports Corp., Korean Air transported a total of 482,000 passengers through its domestic lines last month, down 6.6 percent from a year earlier. (image credit: Kobiz Media)
This also comes despite an 11.5 percent on-year increase in the total number of passengers using domestic flights provided by seven carriers.
Industry experts attribute the lackluster results of Korean Air to customers’ avoidance of its service in the wake of the incident.
“It seems that there are not a few passengers opting for other airline services following the incident, given that there are many options available when it comes to domestic flights,” an industry expert said.
Korean Air also underperformed next to other airliners on international lines.
The company transported a total of 1.38 million passengers through its international flight services last month, up 2.5 percent from a year earlier. This is lower than the industry-wide 9.2 percent hike in the number of passengers traveling overseas, the data showed.
In particular, Asiana Airlines seems to be basking in its rival’s setback with the number of international passengers using its flights growing 9 percent. Low-cost carriers also saw their international passengers jump across the board.
Korean Air said that there is no marked change in its booking ratio and that there is no relations between the number of passengers and the incident since most of tickets were booked months earlier. It expects that bookings for February and March are about 5 percent higher than last year.
(Yonhap)
