maxblast72
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2006
- Posts
- 931
The airlines August traffic reports came out this week, and I noticed that Southwest's load factor was down about 5% year over year. Looking over some other traffic releases over the past few months, July's traffic was down 5% year over year, while June's was down about 4% year over year.
Most other carrier's traffic numbers seem to be flat to slight negative (less than 1%) while Airtran's load factor grew 3% even with the 10% growth in ASM.
Is Southwest raising their fares that much that they are seeing a drop in demand? They don't appear to be growing that much to cause a drop in load factor. Have they found that load factors in the 80's strains their system too much and have set prices to get their load factor back into the middle 70's?
Most other carrier's traffic numbers seem to be flat to slight negative (less than 1%) while Airtran's load factor grew 3% even with the 10% growth in ASM.
Is Southwest raising their fares that much that they are seeing a drop in demand? They don't appear to be growing that much to cause a drop in load factor. Have they found that load factors in the 80's strains their system too much and have set prices to get their load factor back into the middle 70's?