Air China Ltd said in its recently released traffic figures that it carried more than 3.124 million passengers in August, up 14.3% from August 2005.

In the first eight months of this year, Air China carried over 20.686 million passengers, up 14.8 percent from the same period in 2005, it said in a statement.

Cargo throughput for August rose 10.8% to 71,147 tonnes, the airline said.

During the eight-month-period, Air China Ltd carried a total of 52,4781 tonnes of cargo, up 12.4 percent year-on-year.

The overall passenger load factor in August reached 81%, up 2.1 percentage points compared to the same month last year. However, August's overall combined (passenger & cargo) load factor of 66.5% is 0.1% lower than in August 2005.