Thread: US Airline Traffic at 5-Yr Low but with record load factors

Not great news for nonrev folks...hopefully fares go back up so that the pressure to fill the planes to 80+% average load factors comes down.

Anyone else remember the joys of flying nonrev when average load factors were around 70%?

Here's a great chart I pulled from an mit study on load factors.

Average Load Factors for U.S. Airlines, 1995-2008

Code:

1995   1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002   2003   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008       
  67%    70%   71%    71%     71%   73%    70%    72%    74%    76%    79%    80%    81%    80%          

The story below seems to indicate that the trend is continuing upwards, with 2009 coming in at 81.1%.

U.S. airline traffic hit a five-year low for all of 2009, but planes were fuller than ever, the Department of Transportation said Thursday, as airlines slashed capacity amid 2008's record fuel costs and sliding demand amid the recession.
Meanwhile, the industry carried 0.6% fewer passengers in December than a year earlier, returning to a decline after November's year-on-year increase snapped 18 straight months of slumping traffic, the DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics noted.
Travelers have slowly started returning to the skies, and some airlines are adding flights to meet the rekindled demand.
For December, airlines carried 57 million passengers while load factor--a measure of plane fullness--hit 80.4%, a record high for the month. Capacity fell 2.7%.
For all of 2009, traffic fell 5.3% to 703.9 million. Load factor was 80.4% for the entire system and 81.1% for domestic flights, both record highs.