United Airlines Posts an Excellent January, Industry Traffic Data Roundup
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 |