United, Northwest See Steep Decline in Pacific Traffic

(MoneyWatch)  Remember my post about how airlines were asking to defer the startup of the China flights they fought so hard to obtain? Well, it looks like we can get an idea of why that's happening. Airlines are releasing their August traffic numbers, and the Pacific is looking very weak.

The two big American players in the Pacific are United and Northwest, so that's where I'll focus today. First, let's look at United's August results.

In August, United flew just shy of 2.7 billion available seat miles (ASMs) on its Pacific routes. That was down 5.7% from the same time last year. So with that reduction, you'd think they'd be able to fill more seats, right? Bzzt. They actually only filled 78.8% of their seats, down a tremendous 5.3 points from last year's 84.1%. That was well below their load factors in the rest of the system that were in the mid-80s (excluding their tiny Latin American operation which was pretty close to the Pacific loads).

Northwest's results weren't nearly as surprising, but they weren't great either. They actually increased their ASMs slightly in August by 2.7% to just over 2 billion. Load factor was down 3.9 points from 90.5% to 86.6%. That's actually fairly consistent with the rest of their system, whereas before, the Pacific was an outlier.

In case you were wondering, the littler guys saw mixed results. Delta's Pacific loads dropped 5.2 points to 83.4% while the rest of their system increased. American, however, saw the Pacific drop only 0.8%. Interestingly, north of the border, Air Canada actually saw Pacific loads climb 0.8%, so things were better up north, but they did offer 4.4% fewer seats.

It's no wonder airlines are looking to moderate their Pacific presence with results like these.