Christmas and holiday traffic picked up Air New Zealand in December last year, with the carrier flying 0.3 percent more local travellers compared to the same month 2010.

New Zealand’s national carrier carried 833,000 passengers for the months, up from 830,000 in December the prior year.

While domestic travel strengthened, trans-Tasman and Pacific passengers experienced a 0.7 percent drop from 310,000 to 308,000.

International also experienced a five percent fall from 182,000 in December 2010 to 173,000 the same month last year, pushing the company’s Group passenger figures down 0.6 percent to 1.31 million from 1.32 million in December 2010.

Hoping to build its international profile, earlier this month the carrier released plans to strengthen its partnership with All Nippon Airways.

Aiming to improve access between Japan and New Zealand, the two airlines’ chief executives signed a Memorandum of Understanding that would cover code share and grounding handling services in Japan.