Virgin Australia had a 5.7 per cent rise in passenger numbers in October, due to strong growth in domestic traffic.

The airline said it carried 1.74 million passengers in October, up from 1.64 million in the same month last year.

Domestic passengers totalled 1.5 million, up 7.4 per cent from the previous corresponding period, while international passengers dropped 4.3 per cent to just over 227,000.

The group’s revenue passenger kilometres in October were 2.8 billion, up 9.4 per cent from the same time last year.

Revenue passenger kilometres in October, or the number of kilometres travelled by paying customers, were up 9.4 per cent from the same period last year.

On-time performance slipped 2.7 percentage points to 82.8 per cent, Virgin said.

The increase coincided with strikes and cancelled flights at rival airline Qantas.