December Airline Traffic Numbers

(MoneyWatch)  Things got much better in December for the airlines as load factors bounced up across the board. American's increase of 0.4 points was the most anemic when compared to Allegiant's turbocharged 9.8 point increase and AirTran's 7.1 point increase, but these are all positive. You'll also note that every airline cut capacity this month with Frontier down a whopping 17.5 percent. Unsurprisingly, Southwest saw the smallest decline of only 1 percent. Click for definitions.

Airline	ASMs	RPMs	Load Factor
AirTran	(6.9%)	2.3%	+7.1 pts
Alaska*	(10.9%)	(5.2%)	+4.9 pts
Allegiant	(9.6%)	2.6%	+9.8 pts
American*	(8.6%)	(8.2%)	+0.4 pts
Continental	(8.1%)	(6.7%)	+1.2 pts
Delta	(2.4%)	0.7%	+2.4 pts
Frontier*	(17.5%)	(9.7%)	+6.9 pts
JetBlue	(5.1%)	(1.8%)	+2.6 pts
Northwest	(4.5%)	(3.6%)	+0.7 pts
Southwest	(1.0%)	1.1%	+1.5 pts
United*	(12.7%)	(11.5%)	+1.1 pts
US Airways	(6.2%)	(0.9%)	+4.3 pts

*Does not include regional operations