Japan Airlines Group has announced its results for international and domestic traffic for the Japanese summer vacation period, with hints of a recovery particularly for travel to China.

During the 10-day summer vacation period, the JAL Group-based on the combined results of JAL, JALways and Japan Asia Airways-carried a total of 459,059 international passengers, just 1.0% less than in the same vacation period last year.

The results showed that leisure travel to China was definitely back on the road to full recovery with passenger numbers up 38.3% on last year's figures.

Last year's figures had been severely affected by anti-Japanese demonstrations held in China in April 2005.

Passenger traffic on transpacific routes to the mainland of North America was good, up 14.5% on last year's results; and passenger numbers up a moderate 1.4% on Southeast Asia routes.

Route restructuring over the past year resulted in a 9.2% decrease in the total number of international seats available which to some extent led to the high international seat load factor of 82.8%.

The JAL Group domestic summer vacation domestic passenger total was 1,464,873, 2.4% up on last year's result.

Domestic seat supply was 0.2% lower than the same period last year and load factor was 72.3%.

Japan Airlines Group has also been nominated this year for a World Travel Award as World Leading Airline Inflight Meal Service.