Although people are losing jobs left and right, airlines saw fuller planes in April 2009 than any other month so far this year.
Many airlines have released their April traffic results and it looks like people are indeed taking advantage of cheaper fares in 2009. The data that was provided indicates that the airline industry might finally be seeing an end to the lack of passengers flying the friendly skies. In April many airlines saw more seats filled on their fleet than they have in months.
But good news for the airlines is possible bad news for flyers. As capacity matches demand it could put an end to lower ticket prices and crazy sales promotions. For example, stunts like Iberia’s NYC-Madrid sale in March for $200 round-trip and JetBlue’s one-day sale of NYC-San Francisco for $14, may soon become a thing of the past.
Here are some results that airlines released in regards to their April traffic:
- US Airways total April mainline traffic fell 3% from a year ago to 5 billion revenue passenger miles, or one passenger flown one mile. Capacity fell 4.8% to 5.9 billion available seat miles while its load factor rose 1.6 points to 84.8%.
- American Airlines traffic fell 4.7% to 10.28 billion revenue passenger miles while Capacity slid 6.1% to 12.64 billion available seat miles. However, their load factor edged up to 81.3% last month from 80.2% in April 2008. AA was pleased since that was far less than the falloff of 10.9% that they saw between March 2008 and 2009.
- Continental Airlines saw consolidated traffic down 3.4% to 7.6 billion revenue passenger miles. Total April capacity fell 6.8% to 9.2 billion available seat miles from a year ago. Load factor, or the percentage of available seats filled with passengers, rose 2.6 points in April to 86.4%.
