December Airline Traffic Numbers
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 |