Asian airlines continued to record improvements in traffic in July, registering a “modest pickup” in demand for the second month in a row.

The latest figures from the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) show that in July air cargo demand at airlines based in the region increased by 3.9% year on year.

The demand growth in July is an improvement on the rest of the year; traffic over the first seven months of 2016 is 1.5% behind the same period in 2015.

The AAPA airlines also managed to improve load factors compared with a year ago as capacity increased by a lower amount than demand.

As a result, load factors improved by 0.4 percentage points to 62.1%, the association said.