Think Planes Are Crowded Now? There's Room for Things to Get Worse Justin Bachman - Bloomberg
go to original September 9, 2013

Air travel is likely to become even more crowded, especially on regional jet flights. (Jeff Greenberg/Alamy)

Summer, always the busiest season for airline traffic, has been especially robust this year. US Airways Group reported a load factor of 87.9 percent for August, its record for the month and the latest in a series of monthly load records. In May, its proposed merger partner, AMR’s American Airlines, hit a record load of factor of 84 percent—and that figure climbs to 88.7 percent in July if you tally only domestic flights. The numbers are similar for other large carriers, such as United Airlines  (87.2 percent in July) and Delta Air Lines  (87.3 percent in August).

The trend over the past decade has been clear: Higher costs—driven by jet fuel prices—have prompted airlines to pack their planes. The annual average load factor for U.S. carriers rose from 71.9 percent in 2002 to 82.8 percent last year. And carriers aren’t even making bigger profits from the crowded planes: The industrywide “break-even” point for U.S. flights has gone from 69.4 percent in 2000 to 80.9 percent last year.

“One reason planes are fuller is because they have to be to avoid losing money,” says John Heimlich, chief economist at Airlines for America, the U.S. airlines’ trade group. “The airlines had to push really hard on the load-factor lever because they couldn’t push hard with the pricing.”

Read the rest at Businessweek

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