Late Easter Cuts Vueling March Traffic

Spanish airline Vueling on Thursday said that passenger traffic in March dropped 31.9 percent compared with a year earlier as it cut capacity and because of this year's late Easter.

Load factor fell 3.7 percent to 68.7 percent, but for the first quarter as a whole load factor rose 1.3 percent year on year to 66.6 percent.

Vueling cut its fleet to 16 planes from 22 in the year to March, which helped cut capacity by 26.6 percent.

Vueling is in the process of merging with low-cost rival Clickair, controlled by Spain's biggest airline, Iberia.

The new airline will be based in Barcelona and will help Iberia better control over-capacity in a sector that is suffering from Spain's severe economic decline and greater competition from trains.