Source: Puget Sound Business Journal Author: 02/03/2010
Subject Concerned: Airlines
More people are flying Alaska Airlines than a year ago, as the Seattle-based airline said passenger traffic increased last month and more than 85 percent of its flights arrived on-time.
In January, Alaska said its load factor (percentage of available seats occupied by fare-paying passengers) increased to 77.7 percent from 71.7 percent a year earlier. The airline's on-time performance jumped to 85.7 percent from January 2009's 71.5 percent.
The airline, a subsidiary of Alaska Air Group Inc., reported the number of revenue passenger miles (the number of revenue-paying passengers multiplied by the distance traveled in miles) rose to 1.47 billion from 1.34 billion in 2009, or an increase of 9.5 percent.
The airline's available seat miles (the number of seats available multiplied by the number of miles flown) rose 1 percent to 1.89 billion from 1.88 billion a year earlier. And the number of revenue passengers rose 4.5 percent to 1.2 billion from 1.1 billion in 2009.
At sister airline Horizon Air, revenue passenger miles jumped 10.4 percent to 185 million from 167 million a year earlier and available seat miles rose by 1.2 percent to 268 million from 265 million in 2009. The number of revenue passengers rose by more than 4.3 percent to 523,000 from 501,000 a year earlier.
Horizon's passenger load factor rose to 68.8 percent from 63.1 percent and its on-time performance rose to 86.5 percent from 71.7 percent a year earlier.
Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air fly nearly half of the passenger traffic at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.