Southwest Airlines enjoys higher passenger numbers

Southwest Airlines, the biggest US discount airline, carried more passengers in July. 

Statistics based on capacity growth and record load factor showed that traffic for Southwest grew by 14.7 per cent compared to 12 months ago. 

The discount airline set a company record with the highest monthly percentage ever in load factor, the percentage of seats filled, at 80.8 per cent, up from 79.4 per cent last year. 

The airline also announced that it flew six billion revenue passenger miles in July, a figure that was at 5.2 billion in July of the previous year. 

A revenue passenger mile determines how much gross traveling people undertook on the airline and equals one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity, a measurement of available seat miles, also increased 12.7 per cent to 7.4 billion; an increase from last year's 6.5 billion. 

So far this year Southwest Airlines has flown 34.7 billion revenue passenger miles, up from 31.3 billion a year ago.  Its year-to-date seat availability mileage has also increased 12 per cent to 48.9 billion. 

While year-to-date load factor has decreased from 71.7 per cent in 2004 to this year's 70.8 per cent figure, the sky seems to be the limit for America's most profitable discount airline.

Southwest has recently announced plans to expand with new routes to Mexico and possibly Canada and more frequent domestic flights.  Fares for the new routes are to remain at Southwest's highly discounted rates. 

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