Airlines & Routes

For July, AirTran Airways’ traffic grew by 14.1%, based on a 10.1% increase in capacity. The company’s load factor for the month was 89.2% up 3.2 pts compared to the same period in 2007.

US Airways Group reported July 2008 traffic results. Mainline traffic for the month was down 0.8% from July 2007, capacity was up 0.4% versus July 2007 and the load factor for the month of July was 85.1%, down 1.2 points versus July 2007.

TAM and Lufthansa are going to initiate their codeshare agreement on domestic and international routes on August 18. This partnership will allow the two companies to offer more choices of flights to passengers flying between Brazil and Germany, as well as for connections in the two countries.

Frontier Airlines Holdings has received a $75 million commitment in post-petition debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing from Perseus LLC, a private investment firm based in Washington, D.C. with offices in Evergreen, Colorado, New York and Munich. Perseus has also agreed to serve as equity sponsor for Frontier’s plan of reorganization, allowing Perseus to purchase 79.9% of the

ExpressJet Airlines will suspend flying under several lines of its at-risk flying operations in September 2008. ExpressJet mutually agreed to terminate its agreements with Delta Air Lines effective September 1, 2008 and will cease its branded (XE) commercial passenger flight operations on September 2, 2008. The 39 aircraft currently used in these operations will be

SAS Group’s traffic increased by 3.5% during June and seat capacity was up by 5.9% vs 2007. SAS Group carried 4.0 million passengers in June, up 0.3% vs 2007. Total load factor was down by 1.8 pts to 74.7%.

Frontier Airlines announced preliminary traffic results for June 2008 for both Frontier’s mainline operation as well as its wholly owned subsidiary, Lynx Aviation. Traffic decreased 1.1% for June 2008 from the same period last year, while capacity decreased 1.3%. This resulted in a load factor for June 2008 of 87.2%, an increase of .2 points

WestJet announced June traffic results with a 76.5% load factor, a traffic improvement of 17.9%, and a capacity increase of 23.1%. This capacity increase is the largest percentage increase for the airline since November 2006.

Air France/KLM reported that June 2008 traffic rose 2.6% with capacity up 4.1%, compared to June 2007. The load factor amounted to 81.5%, down 1.2 pts compared to the same period last year.

easyJet reported that June load factors remained strong at 86.9%, compared to 86.8% in June 2007 and passenger numbers, including the effect of the GB Airways acquisition, grew 19.5% compared to the same period last year.