CapnVegetto
The Prince of all Saiyans
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2005
- Posts
- 1,981
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
October 6, 2008, 4:43 pm
Airline Traffic Shrinks in September
Posted by Matt Phillips
Large carriers saw slumping air traffic in September, as the impact of rising fares and economic turmoil took its toll.
Though the airlines have long indicated a desire to slim down in the face of historically high fuel costs, a few carriers — JetBlue, AirTran and Continental — had managed to eke out traffic gains in August.
Not so last month. Continental led the pack with a nearly 11% drop in passenger traffic, by revenue passenger miles, a closely watched metric equal to one paying passenger flown one mile. Other domestic legacy carriers also posted steep drops, including American (-9.1%) and United (-9.2%).
Discounters also saw traffic fall during September. Dallas-based Southwest’s traffic fell 5.9%. JetBlue fell 4.8%. Even, AirTran, whose large traffic increases in July and August bucked industrywide trends, finally fell in line with other carriers, dropping 2%.
So why is traffic on the decline? September saw the bulk of the planned capacity cuts that the airlines announced over the summer. And rising fares probably put leisure jaunts out of reach for a certain segment of the population. Of course, the fact that the financial system buckled at the end of the month didn’t help either.
In an e-mail, Darin Lee, an aviation economist with consultancy LECG in Boston, told us all of those elements probably played a role in the downturn in traffic, with “lower capacity being the most important of the three factors.” But going forward, the health of the economy will be important to watch.
“It’s pretty clear to me that economic turmoil is going to be a big theme the rest of 2008 and into 2009,” Lee wrote.
UPDATE: You guys are right. We should have mentioned Hurricane Ike’s impact on Continental’s traffic numbers. The carrier’s Houston hub — its largest — was closed for more than two days because of the September storm and Continental said Ike would cost it about $50 million.
I chose to believe this will be good. We [airlines] have already been through this, got our bailout (which was almost nothing) and have found a way to cope. This is going to dry up growth for premium travel like NJA and those folks will be back on the airline (like P Diddy). Cheap gas and more customers back competing for fewer seats means we start jacking up fares. Gonna be good.
As Lehman learned, being small is not good.
As AIG learned, being big is very nice. Anyone else see the Senate hearing two nights ago on CSPAN? Holy crap!
Now the other shoe is beginning to drop in Europe. Turns out their suits are more screwed up than ours. Some are saying the Euro will not survive. At the same time those risking money and effort in the developing World are reaping the benefits of being a first mover.
Your the biggest tard ever. Europe is nowhere near as bad off as we are. The S and P has dropped over 40 percent from its highs in 2007!!!!! If memory serves it was at 1547 now it in the 900. Europe and Asia isn't anywhere close to this level of loss. They may drop some more but won't come close to our massive losses. They are using international accountanting laws, under Bush's deregulation WE DO NOT. Therefore we have much less transparency and it is much easier to skim money from here and there so you can get that big NJ sparkly jet.