Airlines report Nov. traffic decline

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American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and US Airways and all reported traffic declines last month.

All three carriers serve Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

American Airlines Inc., a subsidiary of AMR Corp., said its traffic fell 14.5 percent in November.

Fort Worth-based American (NYSE: AMR), the top carrier at Lambert, recorded 9.5 billion revenue passenger miles in November, down from 11.1 billion during the same month last year. Revenue passenger miles is a measure of every paying passenger flying every mile, and is generally the industry’s measure of traffic.

American’s load factor — a measure of the percentage of a plane filled with paying passengers — also dropped 4.6 points from 81.2 percent to 76.6 percent.

American’s domestic traffic also fell 19.3 percent over the previous year due to a 15 percent reduction in capacity in November.

International traffic last month also dropped by 5.4 percent due to a 1.3 percent decline in capacity, American said.

Dallas-based Southwest (NYSE:LUV), Lambert’s No. 2 carrier, said traffic last month fell to 5.26 billion revenue passenger miles from 5.74 billion a year earlier. Southwest’s November load factor fell to 63.2 percent from 69.3 percent in November 2007.

Southwest Airlines said traffic was down 8 percent.

Temple, Ariz.-based US Airways Group Inc. reported a nearly 7 percent decrease in mainline passenger traffic for November. US Airways (NYSE:LCC) flew 4.26 billion revenue passenger miles last month, down from 4.57 billion in November 2007.

The carrier’s passenger-load factor, or percentage of filled seats, was 77.7 percent, down from 78.4 percent in the year-ago period. Capacity fell 6.1 percent to 5.48 billion available seat miles.

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