Southwest Airlines Co. said Wednesday its total June traffic rose 5% to more than 7 billion revenue passenger miles from 6.7 billion revenue passenger miles a year ago. A revenue passenger mile is equal to one passenger flown one mile. Total June capacity rose 1.9% to 8.6 billion available seat miles from a year ago. Load factor, or the percentage of available seats filled with passengers, in June rose to 81.9% from 79.5% last year.
AirTran Airways said on Tuesday that its June traffic jumped 7.4 percent, setting a company record for the month as well as for the second quarter.
The airline said it flew 1.89 billion revenue passenger miles last month, or one paying passenger flown one mile. That was up from 1.76 billion revenue passenger miles in June 2009.
Capacity rose 4 percent to 2.19 billion available seat miles, from 2.11 billion a year earlier.
With traffic growing faster than the airline added seats, its planes were more full. Load factor rose 2.8 percentage points to 86.4 percent for the month.
For the first half of the year, traffic rose 7.7 percent to 9.59 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity rose 5.4 percent to 11.94 billion available seat miles. Load factor rose 1.7 percentage points to 80.3 percent.
Allegiant Travel Co., which operates an airline marketed to leisure travelers in small cities, said Wednesday its traffic rose 7.8 percent in June on a similar increase in the number of available seats.
The airline added flights last month, including a new route between Los Angeles and Eugene, Ore.
Allegiant flew paying passengers 479.9 million miles last month, compared with 445.1 million miles a year earlier.
The airline's number of available seats, or capacity, rose 6.2 percent to 516.7 million available seat miles.
Planes were also slightly more full. The carrier's load factor, or occupancy rate, rose 1.4 percentage points to 92.9 percent.
For the second quarter, traffic was up 10.6 percent, while capacity increased by 9.4 percent.
