Posted on: Saturday, January 5, 2002

Airlines report 12 percent fewer passengers over holidays

Advertiser News Services

Airlines carried 12 percent fewer passengers over the holiday period than they did a year ago, although analysts said the falloff might become even steeper in January, a traditionally slow month for air demand.

The airlines recorded 20.2 million revenue passenger miles between Dec. 20 and Jan. 2, a drop of 12.4 percent from the 23 million recorded during the corresponding period a year ago, the Air Transport Association, the trade group for the major airlines, said yesterday.

A revenue passenger mile is one fare-paying passenger carried one mile and is the industry's unit of traffic measurement.

While fewer people are flying since the terrorist attacks, Federal Aviation Administration officials say they expect air travel to return within two years to pre-Sept. 11 levels. The FAA said it won't scale back plans to build new runways and add equipment to handle a 30 percent increase in flights by 2010.

Southwest Airlines Co. bucked the trend, reporting its passenger traffic rose last month from December 2000, the first year-over-year increase for a major U.S. carrier after Sept. 11. US Airways Group Inc. traffic fell less than in November, showing demand is reviving as discounts lure travelers back onto planes.

Southwest, the largest low-fare carrier, said miles flown by paying passengers climbed 0.6 percent. The airline was the only one of the nine biggest U.S. carriers that didn't cut flights or jobs after the attacks to match lower sales. US Airways, the No. 6 U.S. airline, said December traffic fell 22 percent, less than the 25 percent decline in November.

AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, the biggest carrier, said yesterday that December traffic slid 17 percent as it cut capacity 15 percent, while Continental Airlines Inc. reported an 11 percent drop in traffic on a 12 percent capacity reduction.