Finland's national carrier Finnair said on Monday its capacity usage rose in February, bucking a weaker sector trend, as the firm made cuts to counter soft demand.

Finnair said in a statement its load factor rose by 2.4 percentage points year on year in February to 77.2 percent. Total traffic slid 7.9 percent to 597,000 passengers.

The data comes against a gloomy backdrop for the industry as people forego air travel due to the slowdown.

Scandinavian rival SAS said on Friday its passenger traffic dropped by one-fifth in February, with its load factor down 6.1 percent.

"At the beginning of February, traffic growth figures were still fairly strong, but they weakened towards the end of the month," Finnair said in a statement.

"The weakening of demand was partly due to a threatened (pilots) strike scheduled for the last week of February. The average (ticket) price was clearly below last year's level, because business travel continues to fall," it said.

Finnair said it reduced capacity on European routes by 12.4 percent in the month, while domestic traffic was cut 14.9 percent.