- Aug 20, 2002
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United's traffic in September appeared to hold up fairly well, with a monthly load factor of just under 75%. IIRC, this number compares favorably with most of the other network carriers that have reported their September results. Here's the press release that was issued this afternoon.
The most interesting number in the press release IMHO was United's Pacific load factor of 81.9%, up 7.0 percentage points, which reflects a year-over-year traffic (RPM) decline of just 0.9% and seems to indicate that traffic to that region has come back strongly after the Iraq war and the SARS epidemic. And the Atlantic load factor was even better at 85.3% as United's capacity decrease of 14.6% there exceeded its traffic (RPM) decline of 12.6%. Of course, these numbers don't give any idea about United's yields and thus profitability (or the lack thereof) on its Pacific and Atlantic flights. But filling the planes to this extent is at least a good start because if traffic stays strong, yields can (hopefully) be raised in the coming months.
The most interesting number in the press release IMHO was United's Pacific load factor of 81.9%, up 7.0 percentage points, which reflects a year-over-year traffic (RPM) decline of just 0.9% and seems to indicate that traffic to that region has come back strongly after the Iraq war and the SARS epidemic. And the Atlantic load factor was even better at 85.3% as United's capacity decrease of 14.6% there exceeded its traffic (RPM) decline of 12.6%. Of course, these numbers don't give any idea about United's yields and thus profitability (or the lack thereof) on its Pacific and Atlantic flights. But filling the planes to this extent is at least a good start because if traffic stays strong, yields can (hopefully) be raised in the coming months.
