Airline Sector Gains On September Traffic Reports
Source: | Filed in
Aerospace | 
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10/05/09By Christopher Hinton
Airline stocks traded higher Monday, gaining as major U.S. carriers released their September traffic statistics.
At last check, the NYSE Arca Airline Index (XAL) added 1.2% to 27.25 points as all but one of its 13 components moved into the green. In the last 52 weeks, the benchmark index has moved in a range of 30.95 to 12.62 points.
Shares of American Airlines parent AMR Corp. (AMR) jumped 1.6% to $7.58, while US Airways Group (LCC) added 2.6% to $4.42 and Alaska Air Group (ALK) rose 1.3% to $26.14.
On the decline, shares of Southwest Airlines (LUV) lost 2.5% at $8.97.
Airlines began releasing their September traffic reports last Thursday, as Continental Airlines (CAL) reported its first increase in traffic in more than a year with capacity rising modestly and a higher load factor, the industry statistic for tracking the percentage of available seats filled with passengers.
On Monday, American Airlines said September traffic fell 3.5% from a year ago to 9.52 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity declined 6.9% to 11.98 billion available seat miles, helping to lift American’s load factor by 2.8 percentage points to 79.4%.
US Airways also reported a drop in traffic, down 1.6% from a year ago to 4.6 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity fell 0.6% to 5.8 billion available seat miles, while the carrier’s load factor dropped to 79.3% from 80.1% last year.
Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines said total September traffic rose 1.4% to more than 1.5 billion revenue passenger miles, while capacity fell 1.4% to 1.9 billion available seat miles. A unit of Alaska Air Group, the Seattle-based carrier said its load factor added 2.1 points to 77.9%.
Overseas, British Airways said traffic for September was off 0.8%, while capacity dropped 3.7%. Passenger load factor rose 2.4 percentage points to 81.3%.
Premium traffic tumbled 7.9% while non-premium traffic rose 0.7%.
On Friday, AirTran (AAI) said its September traffic surged 11% from a year ago, with a 7.2% jump in capacity and a load factor of 77%, up 2.6 percentage points from a year ago.
