United Airlines Posts an Excellent January, Industry Traffic Data Roundup

(MoneyWatch)  Airline traffic data is out for January and United Airlines posted some stellar numbers that had a lot of people doing a double take. January marked the first month that United decided to peel back the veil and give revenue estimates, a huge kudos is due for that. With an expected 9.5 to 11.5 percent increase in unit revenue, it looks like they've picked a good month to start.

Other than the United unit revenue shocker, not much else was surprising. Southwest continued to rock the load factor game by increasing 9.3 points year over year. The only airlines to post losses in load factor were US Airways with a .6 point loss and AirTran's 1.2 point loss.

Here are the numbers, and once again, nice job on improving transparency, United.

Airline	ASMs	RPMs	Load Factor
AirTran	8.6%	6.8%	-1.2 pts
Alaska*	1.0%	9.5%	+6.0 pts
Allegiant	19.9%	21.6%	+1.3 pts
American*	(2.7%)	0.4%	+2.4 pts
Continental	2.8%	8.5%	+4.0 pts
Delta	(5.6%)	(5.0%)	+0.5 pts
JetBlue	8.9%	9.1%	+0.1 pts
Southwest	(6.7%)	7.1%	+9.3 pts
United	(2.0%)	2.4%	+3.4 pts
US Airways#	(0.6%)	(1.3%)	-0.6 pts

*Does not include regional operations #Only includes wholly-owned regional subsidiaries