Things in the Sky

Yesterday, the Air Transport Association released its monthly passenger yield data, which is a combination of results from Alaska, American, Continental, Delta, JetBlue, United, US Airways, and their regional carriers. Not surprisingly, year-over-year comparisons continue to improve thanks to comparisons off of weaker numbers and an improving revenue environment. Here’s a graph of year-over-year change by region:

Of course, a big factor here is more favorable comparisons. For example, Atlantic yields decreased the most in January last year, so that helped fuel last month’s 4.4% increase (the biggest increase in January). Meanwhile, Latin yields were actually up last year, so it’s not surprising the results were the worst this month, with a 5.1% decrease. Domestic yields were up 1.1%, while Pacific yields experienced a slight 1.6% slide.

And, here’s my usual graph of the 12-month moving average of yields. There’s really nothing to exciting to report here. Yes, we’re starting to see some positive numbers, but we’ve basically been bouncing around the bottom for a few months now.

But let’s put this data in perspective a bit. Here’s the 12-month moving average, but back to the beginning of 2007:

I think that shows pretty well that there’s still a long road ahead for yields to recover.