AirTran Airways said Tuesday that it boosted the number of seats available on its flights in October by 7 percent, but passenger traffic only picked up 5.2 percent year-over-year. Available seat miles, or capacity, rose to 1.9 billion last month from 1.78 billion a year earlier. Traffic, however, didn't quite keep pace. AirTran flew 1.51 billion revenue passenger miles in October, up from 1.43 million in the year-ago period. A revenue passenger mile means one paying passenger flown one mile. That meant planes were still a little emptier, with AirTran's load factor, or occupancy, falling 1.3 percentage points to 79.2 percent. For the first 10 months of the year, though, AirTran has managed to fly fuller planes. Its traffic has fallen 3.6 percent to 15.58 billion revenue passenger miles over the period, but it's cut back on capacity by a larger 4.1 percent to 19.4 billion available seat miles. Load factor is up 0.4 percentage points to 80.3 percent. AirTran Holdings Inc. shares fell 3 cents to close at $4.25. |