Air China's newly posted data shows it carried 13.1% more passengers in July than in the same month a year earlier, with most of the growth coming from its domestic, Hong Kong and Macau routes.

The airline had 2.7 million passengers in July. The monthly gains contributed to a 13.0% rise in the number of passengers carried year-to-date, to 15.3 million in the first seven months of 2005 from 13.5 million in the same period of 2004.

Its passenger load factor for July was 78%, 0.1 percentage points higher than in the same month of 2004. The load factor is at 72.8% year-to-date, up from 70.0% in the first seven months of 2004.

Air China also carried 61,695 metric tons of cargo in July, 10.2% more than in the same month of 2004. It has carried 402,584 tons of cargo in the first seven months of 2005, 9.2% more than the 368,760 carried in the same period of 2004.

Its cargo load factor for July was 52.6%, 1.0 percentage points higher than a year earlier. For the first seven months of 2005 combined, the cargo load factor was 53.3%, up from 52.6% in the same period of 2004.