The warm air of spring provided a bit of lift for Delta (DAL -2.62%). The company has released its metrics for the month, and generally they were up slightly. Revenue passenger miles came in at 16.8 billion, or 1.4% higher on a year-over-year basis. The month's total for available seat miles was 19.8 billion, edging May 2012's 19.6 billion by 0.7%.

The total number of boarded passengers also inched northwards, increasing 0.6% over that same time frame to 14.3 million. The planes they boarded were a bit fuller, on average -- Delta's load factor (i.e., the average "occupancy" of its planes) was 84.8% in May, compared with 84.1% in the same month of 2012.