How Airlines Battled Through the September Traffic Blues

Say the word "September" around airline managers and you'll hear a collective sigh. See, September ranks as just about the worst month for airline travel, and I think you'll be hard-pressed to find an airline that wouldn't be happy just getting rid of it altogether (damn you, Gregorian calendar). But the airlines did a good job of managing it this year, and it may not be the absolutely awful month that it usually is.

The problem with September is its inconvenient placement in the year. It comes just after the busy summer travel season and before any fall breaks. So leisure travel is basically non-existent. It's even worse for those airlines that are heavy in Florida, because you throw in a hurricane threat and boiling humid heat and you've got a real stinker.

Business travel does start to pick up again in September after the summer lull, but it doesn't really kick into the full swing the day the calendar flips over from August. It's a transition month.

This year, however, airlines did a good job of keeping planes full. You'll see that no airline saw fewer seats filled this September as compared to last and some did better than others. JetBlue, for example, brought back its All You Can Jet pass and saw huge response.

For some airlines that do report revenue performance, the results were good there as well. United (UAL) (United Airlines only, excluding Continental) saw unit revenues up about 14 percent year-over-year and US Airways (LCC) was up about 13 percent. The only poor performer of the bunch? Allegiant (ALGT). That airline saw its unit revenue drop 1 to 2 percent.

So what happened there? Well, while most airlines just want to park their airplanes for September, Allegiant actually has the ability to do that. Its bought old, cheap airplanes and contracts out for much of its labor, so it can park airplanes and not feel the pain of paying for them. But this September, it decided to push things by increasing scheduled service flying by more than 20 percent. The airline filled those seats but had to trade for lower fares to make that happen.

Here are the September traffic numbers from 2010 vs 2009. Available Seat Miles (ASMs) are a measure of total potential passenger capacity while Revenue Passenger Miles (RPMs) are a measure of actual passenger capacity. Load factor is RPMs/ASMs.

Related:

• Memo to Airlines: Looks Like You Can't Cram Any More Butts Into Seats
• Strong June Traffic Means It's Time For Airlines to Raise Airfares -- Cautiously
• Weak July Traffic Shows Allegiant Lost Altitude