Air China Ltd, the Mainland China's flag carrier, said it carried 2.56 mln passengers in May, up 14.7 pct from a year earlier.

For the five months to May, the airline carried 12.01 mln passengers, up 16.0 pct from the same period in 2005, it said in a statement on its website.

Cargo throughput for May rose 13.4 pct year-on-year to 62,937 tons, it said.

For the five-month period, it carried a total of 318,816 tons of cargo, up 12.5 pct year-on-year.

The passenger load factor for May was 74.1 pct, or 2.7 percentage points higher than a year earlier, while the cargo load factor for the month was 51.9 pct, down 0.6 percentage points year-on-year, the airline said.