Air France KLM posted a sharp profits rise for its third quarter on Thursday, boosted by record passenger load factors and a favorable comparison with the previous year.

The world's largest airline by revenues said net income rose sharply to EUR77 million (USD$91.6 million) in the October-December quarter from EUR23 million (USD$27.4 million) in the same period a year before, which had been boosted by the sale of a stake in bookings system Amadeus.

Air France KLM said its third quarter operating profit jumped to EUR190 million ($226 million) from just EUR20 million (USD$23.8 million) a year before.

It gave a full-year 2005/2006 operating profit target of above EUR900 million (USD$1.07 billion), but did not spell out what this meant for the fourth quarter given that operating profit had already reached EUR940 million (USD$1.12 billion) by the nine-months stage.

However, it pointed out that its fourth quarter is usually affected by seasonal factors and that traffic would be especially affected in March due to the fact that Easter falls in April this year.

The recently merged airline group's financial year runs from April to March.

The 2004/2005 third quarter had been hit by a shift in the efficiency of fuel hedging towards the fourth quarter.

The Franco-Dutch airline said revenues rose 12.4 percent to EUR5.43 billion (USD$6.46 billion) in the quarter, up from EUR4.83 billion (USD$5.75 billion) a year earlier.

Operating charges rose 8.9 percent in the third quarter but underlying costs would have fallen 5.3 percent excluding fuel charges, the airline said. Staff costs rose 4.3 percent.

Unit costs measured in available seat kilometres crept up 0.5 percent but fell 4.2 percent in like-for-like terms.