Britain's FTSE outperforms as BoE keeps rates unchanged

* FTSE 100 index gains 0.5 percent

* Bank of England keeps interest rates steady

* Airlines up on Air France (Paris: FR0000031122 - news) passenger figures

By Atul Prakash

LONDON Oct 8 (Reuters) - Britain's top share index climbed on Thursday, outperforming major European stock indexes, after the Bank of England left interest rates unchanged and policymakers appeared in no hurry to hike them.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.5 percent at 6,369.25 points by 1335 GMT. In contrast, the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index, France's CAC and Germany's DAX were up 0.1 to 0.2 percent.

BoE policymakers voted 8-1 to keep rates at a record-low 0.5 percent. The central bank also said inflation would stay below 1 percent until spring 2016. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) was zero in August.

"There is some relief that the BoE is not in a hurry to raise interest rates, especially because the central bank sees inflation rising too slowly to its target level," said Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown (LSE: HL.L - news) . "The UK stock market is also getting support from a rally in some commodity stocks."

The UK oil and gas index rose 0.7 percent, tracking a rise in oil prices. The mining index advanced 0.8 percent.

The mining company Fresnillo (Other OTC: FNLPF - news) rose 3.2 percent to 697.5 pence, the top gainer in the FTSE 100 index, after HSBC raised its target price for the stock to 810 pence from 760 pence. Global diversified mining company BHP Billiton (NYSE: BBL - news) was up 3.1 percent.

EasyJet (Other OTC: EJTTF - news) rose 1.7 percent and IAG 0.5 percent. Analysts cited a boost from Air-France-KLM's report that total group traffic for September 2015 was up 22 percent. (Additional reporting by Kit Rees; Editing by Larry King)