The Aeroflot Group saw its load factor decline in July as new additions to its fleet caused capacity growth to outstrip demand increases.

In July, the Russian airline saw traffic increase by 6% year on year to 989m revenue tonne km while capacity increased by the higher amount of 7.1% to 1.4bn available tonne km.

As a result, revenue load factor was down by 0.8 percentage points compared with the same month a year ago to 68.8%.

The decline comes as the airline group adds new aircraft to its fleet.

Since the start of the year, it has added nine Boeing 737-800s, one Airbus A319, four SSJ100s and three Boeing 777-300ERs.

Nine Boeing 737-800s, one Airbus A320 and five Il-96s were removed from the Aeroflot Group fleet. The net increase in the Group’s fleet amounted to two aircraft.