Our winners and losers in the 2011 traffic wars:

• Among the big carriers, Alaska Airlines repoted an 11.0 percent increase in traffic. Hawaiian Air, a smaller carrier, showed a 17.0 percent increase.

Two regionals, SkyWest and Pinnacle, showed even bigger increases, but we can attribute much of that to SkyWest’s full-year ownership of ExpressJet, acquired in November 2010, and Pinnacle’s full-year ownership of Mesaba. acquired in July 2010. American Eagle jumped 12.9 percent.

• United Continental, which includes the combined numbers of United Airlines and Continental Airlines, saw its traffic decline 1.5 percent. No. 2 Delta Air Lines was up a smidgeon, 0.1 percent, and No. 3 American Airlines saw its traffic increase 0.8 percent.

• Overall, passenger traffic among these carriers – which include the vast majority of U.S. carrier traffic – was up 3.1 percent.

• On capacity, the fastest grower among the big carriers was, again, Alaska. Its regional affiliate, Horizon Air, shrunk the most.

• At a 3.3 percent increase, capacity increased more than traffic. As a result, load factors dropped 0.6 percentage points to 82.7 percent.

• The biggest drop in load factor was reported by Republic, excluding its Frontier Airlines unit, down 3.5 points to 72.0 percent. Meanwhile, Frontier said its loads jumped 3.1 points to 85.8 percent.

• Among the big carriers, Alaska led the bunch with a 1.9-point increase, to 85.2 percent. Delta and United showed declines; American, US Airways, JetBlue and Southwest showed increases.

A note on why we’re not reporting these numbers until Jan. 20: Financially troubled Pinnacle Airlines did not release its numbers until Friday evening.

Here’s the breakdown by carrier. Traffic is in thousands of revenue passenger miles; capacity is in thousands of available seat miles; load factor is percentage of seats filled with paying passengers, calculated as RPMs divided by ASMs.


Traffic 2011 2010 Change
Alaska 22,586,000 20,350,000 11.0%
Allegiant 5,314,976 5,211,663 2.0%
American 126,443,572 125,446,318 0.8%
American Eagle 9,615,656 8,516,198 12.9%
Delta 168,282,394 168,180,267 0.1%
Frontier 12,899,243 12,571,202 2.6%
Great Lakes 162,893 149,131 9.2%
Hawaiian 10,151,216 8,675,427 17.0%
Horizon 2,131,000 2,450,000 -13.0%
JetBlue 30,697,903 28,279,450 8.6%
Pinnacle 8,673,702 6,942,182 24.9%
Republic minus Frontier 8,062,205 8,572,623 -6.0%
SkyWest 29,109,039 20,227,220 43.9%
Southwest 103,864,488 97,597,121 6.4%
United 181,763,454 184,579,844 -1.5%
US Airways 60,779,235 58,976,732 3.1%
US Airways Express 2,298,455 2,216,713 3.7%
Total 782,835,431 758,942,091 3.1%
Capacity 2011 2010 Change
Alaska 26,517,000 24,434,000 8.5%
Allegiant 5,797,753 5,742,014 1.0%
American 154,254,293 153,180,417 0.7%
American Eagle 13,130,041 11,751,323 11.7%
Delta 203,449,949 200,814,042 1.3%
Frontier 15,036,619 15,198,973 -1.1%
Great Lakes 370,376 388,162 -4.6%
Hawaiian 12,039,937 10,151,660 18.6%
Horizon 2,726,000 3,235,000 -15.7%
JetBlue 37,232,367 34,743,749 7.2%
Pinnacle 11,589,719 9,438,766 22.8%
Republic minus Frontier 11,191,105 11,348,280 -1.4%
SkyWest 36,698,859 25,503,845 43.9%
Southwest 128,518,201 122,460,579 4.9%
United 219,436,755 220,060,050 -0.3%
US Airways 72,603,066 71,587,705 1.4%
US Airways Express 3,152,193 3,111,316 1.3%
Total 953,744,233 923,149,881 3.3%
Load factors 2011 2010 Change
Alaska 85.2% 83.3% 1.9
Allegiant 91.7% 90.8% 0.9
American 82.0% 81.9% 0.1
American Eagle 73.2% 72.5% 0.8
Delta 82.7% 83.7% -1.0
Frontier 85.8% 82.7% 3.1
Great Lakes 44.0% 38.4% 5.6
Hawaiian 84.3% 85.5% -1.1
Horizon 78.2% 75.7% 2.4
JetBlue 82.4% 81.4% 1.1
Pinnacle 74.8% 73.5% 1.3
Republic minus Frontier 72.0% 75.5% -3.5
SkyWest 79.3% 79.3% 0.0
Southwest 80.8% 79.7% 1.1
United 82.8% 83.9% -1.0
US Airways 83.7% 82.4% 1.3
US Airways Express 72.9% 71.2% 1.7
Total 82.7% 83.3% -0.6

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