Scandinavian airline SAS said on Thursday that April group traffic, measured by revenue passenger kilometres, rose 17.4 percent year-on-year.

The airline, half-owned by the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway said its passenger load factor fell 2.8 percentage points year-on-year to 69.1 percent.

The yield in March, the latest month for which unit revenue figures are available, was down 10.8 percent year-on-year as Easter fell in March this year.

"One should be very cautious not to over-interpret these numbers, since Easter was in March this year, while it was in April last year, and due to a strike in April 2007," said Jacob Pedersen, analyst at Sydbank.

SAS said it expected the yield for April to be around 5 percent higher than the same month last year.

"The market is still characterized relatively by good demand and passenger growth," SAS said in a statement.

"There are still uncertainties regarding the future macro-economic development as well as the competitive situation."

Like many national flag carriers, SAS has been struggling with competitive pressure from cut-price rivals, overcapacity and, most recently, a huge rise in fuel costs.

SAS posted a pretax loss of SEK973 million kronor in the first quarter and announced 1,000 job cuts as part of a short-term action plan to boost earnings by around SEK1.1 billion this year.

On Wednesday, it added a fuel surcharge on top of the price of its tickets to meet rising costs.

The airline's long-term strategic plan calls for pretax profits of SEK4 billion by 2011. In 2007, it made a pretax profit of SEK1.05 billion.

Finland's national carrier Finnair, a Nordic rival to SAS, saw April traffic up 9.6 percent.