Things in the Sky

Yesterday, Southwest released its November traffic results, and unfortunately they weren’t the greatest. If you recall, Southwest’s October results were pretty strong compared to competitors, but not in November. RPMs were down 8.3% with a 0.4% increase in ASMs. Load factor was down 6.1 points compared to November 2007 to 63.2%.

On the bright side, AirTran released results yesterday and they didn’t seem too horrible. Load factor was only down by 0.4 points compared to November 2007.

The decrease in load factor for US Airways wasn’t that terrible, either - only a decrease of 0.7 points, though US Airways President Scott Kirby was quoted in the press release as saying that “November consolidated (mainline and Express) passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM) decreased between three and five percent versus the same period last year.”

I’m not sure how 2009 will go in terms of traffic - especially in terms of business travel. I’m fairly confident that many companies will have a smaller travel budget for 2009 compared to 2008.

And while we’re on demand and capcity, click here for a good article from WSJ about Delta’s capacity plans.