US airline demand remains positive in October; eight carriers report load factor growth

Hoping for even greater growth: jetBlue has recorded the highest growth among the largest US airlines for October. Wanting to win over more passengers on the Florida market, the airline last week became the official airline partner of the National Hockey League team Florida Panthers.

With an average growth in demand of 0.9% across the major US legacy and low-cost carriers reported for October (RPM; year-on-year), the growth experienced in September has retracted. More than half of the airlines did, however, still report positive figures for October. Among the airlines in the red, all of which are legacy carriers, only Delta shows a negative trend this autumn with a year-on-year decline falling to -6.5% in October.

The major part of this development is contributed by the airline’s international network, which reports a fall of 9.7%, with the greatest decline in demand on Asia-Pacific routes, while Latin American traffic grew.

Source: Airline websites

Alaska Airlines’ growth in October (3.0%) outperformed Continental Airlines (1.7%) and low-cost legend Southwest (1.9%), while jetBlue and AirTran represented the greatest growth at 7.2% and 5.2% respectively.

Load factors climbing

A study of the airlines’ load factors reveals that airlines’ declining RPM coincides with decreased capacity. All airlines but one have increased their load factors since last year. The exception, AirTran, simply appears to have grown its operations by so much that the load factor has been unable to keep up.

Airline	LF Oct 08	LF Oct 09	LF change
AirTran	80.5%	79.2%	-1.3 points
Alaska Airlines	73.6%	77.0%	+3.4 points
American	79.0%	83.1%	+4.0 points
Continental	79.0%	82.5%	+3.5 points
Delta	82.6%	84.2%	+1.6 points
jetBlue	80.7%	80.8%	+0.1 points
Southwest	70.4%	79.2%	+8.8 points
United	80.8%	83.1%	+2.3 points
US Airways	81.2%	82.2%	+1.0 points
Source: Airline websites