Monday, 9 February 2009: It is a mark of the struggling aviation industry that the world’s largest airline, Delta, as well as Northwest, found their system traffic and capacity to fall significantly in January of 2009.
Delta experienced a 2.2 decline in system traffic, when compared to January 2008, and a capacity decrease of 1.9 percent.
The system load factor for Delta fell 0.3 points to 75.1 percent.
Delta experiences an improvement in international traffic, with a 6.6% growth year on year, with an 11.3% increase in capacity. However, load factor still declined 3.2 points.
Domestic traffic had a harder January, with a 6.7% decline with 8.5% reduced capacity. However, domestic load factor was at an all-time high for January, increasing 1.5 points to 76.4%.
Northwest also experienced an 8.2% decline in system traffic in January 2009, with a capacity decrease of 6.4%. The overall system load factor fell 1.5 points to 77.8%.
Unlike Delta, Northwest had difficulties in the international market, with traffic falling 5.78% in January with a 2.4% decrease in capacity, and 2.8 point decline in load factor.
Domestic traffic did not fare better, with Northwest domestic traffic falling 10.0% in a 9.0% fall in capacity. The load factor fell 0.8 points to 76.8 percent.
