May Air Traffic Shows Early Signs of a Strong Summer; Now the Unions Want a Piece of the Pie

(MoneyWatch)  May traffic numbers are in, and man, they're good. As you can see below, every airline showed at least modest growth in capacity with the exception of American (AMR) which was essentially flat. On top of that, every airline showed strong gains in the number of passengers and load factor. The unions must be thrilled.

You might think that they'd have to buy some of that traffic, but you'd be wrong. Continental (CAL), US Airways (LCC), and United (UAUA) all release unit revenue estimates, and they all are looking at an increase of more than 20 percent year over year. That is a staggering number and it shows just how quickly they've bounced back from the dregs of last year.

Summer should be just as strong if not stronger. Fare sales have been scarce and fare levels are relatively high. This is great news for most airlines, though the ones in union negotiations may have a harder time of it now. As we all know, any profits in this industry are immediately claimed by unions as their own. There's no question we're going to hear a lot of that this summer as unions clamor for a piece of the pie. Instead of simply going for profit sharing, however, they'll want a big raise that's permanent. If management caves, then they'll just go back for concessions in the next down cycle. Great, huh?

But that's a problem we haven't had for a long time. Whether a double-dip recession is around the corner or not, this appears to at least be a good summer. Management needs to stay focused on keeping the troops informed about what's going on.

Here's the May roundup. These are year-over-year comparisons for May 2010 vs May 2009. ASMs are "Available Seat Miles" (a measure of total potential passenger capacity), RPMs are Revenue Passenger Miles (a measure of filled seats and revenue earned), and Load Factor measures the relationship between the two:

Airline	ASMs	RPMs	Load Factor
AirTran	4.6%	8.4%	+2.8 pts
Alaska*	4.5%	10.7%	+4.6 pts
Allegiant	8.2%	10.0%	+1.5 pts
American*	(0.4%)	4.1%	+3.6 pts
Continental	0.2%	3.7%	+2.9 pts
Delta	0.6%	2.7%	+1.6 pts
Frontier	5.0%	11.0%	+5.0 pts
JetBlue	4.5%	9.8%	+3.9 pts
Southwest	0.0%	3.5%	+2.6 pts
United	3.3%	7.5%	+3.3 pts
US Airways#	1.6%	1.8%	+0.3 pts

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

Photo via Flickr user Daquella manera