Southwest Holds Capacity Steady, Sees Traffic Decline Sharply

(MoneyWatch)  Southwest has always lagged the industry in load factor, but even with that in mind, its November numbers are pretty shocking. The airline turned in a 63.2 percent load factor for the month, down more than 6 points from last year.

While many airlines decided to slash capacity, Southwest held firm and actually had a very tiny increase (0.4 percent). So with the same amount of capacity flying around, the airline saw a whopping 10 percent decrease in traffic. We know that Southwest has been aggressive at growing revenue (and was very successful in October), so my guess is that fares were much higher but fewer people were buying. We'll know more when the fourth quarter results are released, but for now, it's clear that demand is dropping.