Major airlines report declines in traffic
Washington Business Journal - by Tierney Plumb Staff Reporter
American Airlines, US Airways and Southwest Airlines all reported traffic declines last month.
All three carriers serve Dulles International Airport and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and American and US Airways serve Reagan National Airport.
American Airlines Inc., a subsidiary of AMR Corp., said its traffic fell 14.5 percent in November.
Fort Worth-based American (NYSE: AMR) recorded 9.5 billion revenue passenger miles in November, down from 11.1 billion during the same month last year. Revenue passenger miles is a measure of every paying passenger flying every mile, and is generally the industry’s measure of traffic.
American’s load factor — a measure of the percentage of a plane filled with paying passengers — also dropped 4.6 points from 81.2 percent to 76.6 percent.
American’s domestic traffic also fell 19.3 percent over the previous year due to a 15 percent reduction in capacity in November.
International traffic last month also dropped by 5.4 percent due to a 1.3 percent decline in capacity, American said.
Temple, Ariz.-based US Airways Group Inc. reported a nearly 7 percent decrease in mainline passenger traffic for November. Southwest Airlines said traffic was down 8 percent.
US Airways (NYSE:LCC) flew 4.26 billion revenue passenger miles last month, down from 4.57 billion in November 2007. The carrier’s passenger-load factor, or percentage of filled seats, was 77.7 percent, down from 78.4 percent in the year-ago period. Capacity fell 6.1 percent to 5.48 billion available seat miles.
Dallas-based Southwest (NYSE:LUV) said traffic last month fell to 5.26 billion revenue passenger miles from 5.74 billion a year earlier. Southwest’s November load factor fell to 63.2 percent from 69.3 percent in November 2007.
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