Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Friendliest aviation Ccmmunity on the web
  • Modern site for PC's, Phones, Tablets - no 3rd party apps required
  • Ask questions, help others, promote aviation
  • Share the passion for aviation
  • Invite everyone to Flightinfo.com and let's have fun

Recent Changes in Southwest Load Factor

Welcome to Flightinfo.com

  • Register now and join the discussion
  • Modern secure site, no 3rd party apps required
  • Invite your friends
  • Share the passion of aviation
  • Friendliest aviation community on the web

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?
 
i think it's mostly due to denver ... they're pleased, but load factor's arent' that high there yet.
 
Southwest flew 6.6 billion revenue passenger miles (RPMs) in August 2008, a 5.2 percent decrease from the 7.0 billion RPMs flown in August 2007. Available seat miles (ASMs) increased 1.5 percent to 8.9 billion from the August 2007 level of 8.7 billion. The load factor for the month was 74.6 percent, compared to 80.0 percent for the same period last year. In August 2008, our average length of haul was 855 miles, and we flew 101,433 trips.

Note that seat miles only increased 1.5% (that's the growth), but load factor is down about 5%, as are RPMs. Also note how the haul lengths are increasing. No reference given for that year over year, but I think it used to be quite a bit shorter than that.
I think that's why Gary Kelly has recently voiced concerns over growth. If growing the fleet isn't making you money....then why grow the fleet...:crying:
 
GK needs to wake up and smell the coffee, he's not running a small Texas airline anymore, he needs to aquire and expand or wither and die.
 
I would think that SWA has more price sensitive leisure travelers that are harder hit by a softening economy. I'm sure they have a large amount of business travelers, but not the same amount as a legacy like AA, UA, etc.

Just a guess, not meant as a bash on SWA.
 
Load factor dropped 5%. What did the YIELD do? Don't know yet. We raised ticket prices over 10 times last year. Wait till the earnings come out before you predict our demise.

Gup
 

Latest resources

Back
Top