Alaska Airlines traffic falls 6.9 pct in November

SEATTLE - Alaska Air Group Inc. said on Thursday that traffic fell 6.9 percent in November on its main carrier, Alaska Airlines.

Alaska Airlines flew 1.4 billion revenue passenger miles, a measure of traffic that accounts for one paying passenger flown one mile. That was down from 1.51 billion during November 2007.

Capacity, measured in available seat miles, fell 6.8 percent to 1.83 billion, from 1.96 billion a year earlier.

Load factor, or the percentage of seats filled, was flat at 76.7 percent for the month.

For the first 11 months of the year, Alaska Airlines flew 17.23 billion revenue passenger miles, up 2 percent from the year-earlier period. Capacity rose 1.1 percent to 22.38 billion. Load factor rose 0.7 percentage points to 77 percent.

Alaska Air said its other subsidiary, Horizon Air, flew 181 million revenue passenger miles in November, down 23.9 percent from 238 million miles during November 2007. Capacity fell 20.7 percent to 257 million available seat miles, down from 324 million a year earlier. Horizon's load factor for the month fell 2.9 percentage points to 70.5 percent.

For the first 11 months of the year, Horizon's traffic dropped 8.7 percent to 2.45 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity fell 8 percent to 3.37 billion available seat miles. Load factor fell a half percentage point to 72.9 percent.

Alaska Air Group shares gained 25 cents to $25.01 in morning trading.

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