Alaska Airlines October traffic up 3 percent

SEATTLE — Alaska Air Group Inc. said Tuesday that its planes were fuller in October as passenger traffic rose 3 percent at its Alaska Airlines unit while the carrier trimmed available seating.

Alaska Airlines flew 1.46 billion revenue passenger miles during October, up from 1.42 billion in the 2008 period. An RPM represents one paying passenger flown one mile.

Meanwhile, capacity — measured as available seat miles — shrank 1.6 percent to 1.89 billion from 1.92 billion a year earlier. That meant that occupancy, also known as load factor, rose 3.4 percentage points to 77 percent.

For the first 10 months of the year Alaska's traffic fell 3.5 percent to 15.27 billion revenue passenger miles, but capacity fell further, dropping 5.8 percent to 19.36 billion available seat miles. That ratio helped occupancy rise 1.9 percentage points to 78.9 percent.

October traffic at Horizon Air rose 3.2 percent to 203 million revenue passenger miles, while capacity was flat at 277 million available seat miles. Load factor rose 2.3 percentage points to 73.4 percent.

Through October, Horizon's traffic has fallen 11.8 percent to 2 billion revenue passenger miles, while capacity has shrunk 11.6 percent to 2.75 billion available seat miles. Load factor has fallen 0.2 percentage points to 72.9 percent.

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Nov 3, 2009 - 11:41 p.m. EDT

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