Frontier Airlines says May traffic, capacity fell

DENVER — Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc., parent of Frontier Airlines and Lynx Aviation, reported Thursday that May traffic, capacity and load factor fell for Frontier’s mainline operations, compared to the same month a year ago.

Revenue passenger miles decreased 15.7 percent to 747.6 million from 887.2 million revenue passenger miles in May 2008.

A revenue passenger mile is one passenger flown one mile.

Capacity, as measured by available seat miles, was down 14.9 percent to 919.2 million, compared to 1.08 billion available seat miles in May 2008.

Load factor, or the percentage of seats filled, fell 0.9 percentage points to 81.3 percent, compared to 82.2 percent in May 2008.

Year-to-date, revenue passenger miles fell 18.8 percent to 3.39 billion from 4.18 billion revenue passenger miles in the year-ago period, while available seat miles fell 15.9 percent to 4.40 billion from 5.24 billion available seat miles in the year-ago period, and load factor fell 2.7 percentage points to 77.1 percent from 79.8 percent in the year-ago period.

Frontier Airlines is operating under bankruptcy protection.