BA traffic on the increase

More than 3m passengers flew with British Airways last month, up 4.3% in the same last year, driven by the UK and Europe, and Africa and the Middle East.The airline, whose merger with Spain's Iberia should complete by the end of 2010, carried 3.05m travellers in September compared with 2.9m in 2009. Numbers in the UK/Europe region rose 6.2% to 1.9m and were up 6.9% in Africa and the Middle East at 301,000."Market conditions remain as previously anticipated, with strong yield performance in both premium and non-premium cabins," said BA on Tuesday. Premium traffic was up 4.3% and non-premium by 0.7%.Traffic measured in revenue passenger kilometres grew by 1.3%, passenger capacity and, measured in available seat kilometres, inched up 0.3%.As a result, the passenger load factor rose 0.9 points to 82.4%. Bay Capital