USA Today article

[jdru25]

As most of us that are out there flying know the planes are filling up. Here's an article from the USA today. Hopefully it will be blue skies ahead for us all.

http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+Airlines+predict+record-full+summer&expire=&urlID=10976955&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Ftravel%2Fnews%2F2004-07-11-planecrowds_x.htm&partnerID=1664

 

[Ty Webb]

Of course, he used the wrong metric to make his point. He should have used, or at least included the number of emplanements. Using load factor only is about as useful as a telephone number without an area code.

Some of the companies on the list showed flat or negative growth in LF because of massive fleet expansion, such as Jet blue, who carried more pax but showed a negative LF growth.

 

[surplus1]

I would recommend that you take everything you read in USAToday with several grains of salt.

The way things are today there's more than one big airline that couldn't make a profit if the load factor were 100%.

It will be a while before we see "blue skies" for a lot of airlines.

 

[STL717]

Difficult commuting

The real importance of this article is how high load factors are affecting commuting.

 

[EagleRJ]

Ticket prices have much more impact on profitability than load factors.

Most people today are flying on tickets they got on Orbitz/Travelocity, and most people in First Class used miles or loyalty programs to upgrade.
The legacy airlines' business models still count on walk-up business customers paying thousands or even tens of thousands for a ticket. That was where the profit came from in the past.