American Eagle, the regional affiliate of American Airlines, flew fuller planes in November as traffic jumped 11.7%, outstripping an 6.8% increase in available seats.
Not counting its Executive Airlines unit, traffic was up 12.6% to 591 million revenue passenger miles. A revenue passenger mile equals one paying passenger flown one mile.
Capacity grew 6.8% overall and 7.1% to 822.8 million available seat miles not counting Executive.
Occupancy, or load factor, climbed 3.1 percentage points to 70.4%.
American Eagle's November dovetailed with the results at American, where domestic traffic — the same kind handled by American Eagle — actually grew 1.4%.
For the first 11 months of the year, American Eagle said traffic fell 3.7% but capacity dropped further by 5.6%. Carriers have been trimming flights from their schedules in hopes of flying fuller planes amid a downturn in travel demand linked to the economic slump.
