Airlines & Routes

AirTran Airways’ traffic for the month of January was up 0.6% while capacity was down 3.2%. The airline’s load factor in January was 74.8%, a 2.8 pt increase over the same period last year.

Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) has selected Hamilton Sundstrand to provide the Ram Air Turbine emergency system for the COMAC C919 narrow-body commercial aircraft. In addition to the 30 kVA electric Ram Air Turbine, the emergency system includes a generator control unit, auto deploy control unit, actuator, stow panel and generator line contactor. In

Iberia released that in December 2010 traffic grew by 3.7%, with a 4.5% increase in capacity. The load factor was 78.4%t, 0.6 points lower than in 2009. Traffic was negatively affected by both the closing of the Spanish air space as a consequence of the air traffic controllers strike (carried out on the 3rd and

Deutsche Lufthansa AG significantly improved its traffic performance in 2010 compared with the previous year. All in all, the airlines in the Group welcomed 90.2 million passengers on board their flights over the past twelve months. This represents an increase of 17.2% over the previous year. Capacity was up by 12.1% and traffic grew by

SAS Group’s traffic increased by 14.3% during December and capacity increased 9.1% compared to the same period in 2009. The passenger load factor improved to a December record of 73.0% and a full year record of 74.2%. SAS Group carried 1.8 million passengers in December, up 10.9%.

Southwest Airlines reported that traffic in December 2010 increased 11.3% from December 2009, capacity increased 5.6% and the load factor for the month was 80.4%, compared to 76.2% for the same period last year.

Ryanair reported that traffic for December 2010 increaced 2% while the load factor slightly fell by 1pt to 80% compared to December 2009.

Copa Holdings, S.A. and its Copa Airlines and Copa Airlines Colombia operating subsidiaries, released preliminary passenger traffic statistics for December 2010: consolidated traffic increased 22% while capacity increased 19.7% compared to the same period in2009. Consolidated load factor was up 1.5 pts to 78.4%.

BA released that December 2010 traffic fell by 8.3%, while capacity was down 7.7% on December 2009. This resulted in a passenger load factor decrease of 0.4 points versus last year, to 76.4%. Traffic comprised a 1.6% decrease in premium traffic and a 9.6% decrease in non-premium traffic.

Finnair’s December traffic figures were adversely affected by a strike by cabin staff, which lasted more than a week. Traffic declined by more than 26% compared with December the previous year and capacity was down 19%. The load factor for the month was down 7pts to 71%.