- Aug 20, 2002
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United announced its May 2004 traffic results this afternoon. The highlight was a record load factor for May of 80.1%, which IIRC was the highest achieved by any of the legacy network carriers. But before anyone else says it, I know that high load factors are not necessarily indicative of profitability. What I did find most interesting (after making a few calculations) was that while United's North American RPMs were growing at a pretty good pace (11.6%), international RPMs were growing substantially faster (45.0%, paced by a huge albeit explainable -- SARS -- 86.2% increase in Pacific RPMs), causing North American RPMs as a percent of total RPMs to shrink from 70% in May 2003 to only 64% last month. And that's including the carrier's elimination of MIA-GRU/EZE nonstop service on May 1. This tells me that United is now focusing on the more profitable international routes that are largely immune (at least for now) to the LCC phenomenon that is greatly hurting its yields in many domestic markets. This trend should continue in June as United starts (actually re-starts) IAD-ZRH, ORD-KIX and SFO-PEK nonstop service plus additional HNL-NRT nonstop flights. Perhaps this (and further) expansion of international service will help to some degree in bringing United closer to profitability.
You can read the United press release here.
You can read the United press release here.
