Mesa Air Group traffic falls 15.3 percent in June

Mesa Air Group Inc. said Wednesday traffic fell 15.3 percent in June, citing the continued impact of severe weather and other issues slowing operations.

The airline company's total traffic in June fell to 526.2 million revenue passenger miles, from 621.1 million revenue passenger miles in June 2007. A revenue passenger mile measures one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity fell 12.7 percent to 669.3 million available seat miles, from 766.6 million a year earlier.

Load factor, an industry measure of occupancy, fell 2.4 percentage points to 78.6 percent.

"Much of the operation was impacted by severe weather and air traffic control issues significantly impacting our on-time performance," Chairman and Chief Executive Jonathan Ornstein said in a statement.

For the first half of the year, traffic is down 14.6 percent to 3.01 billion revenue passenger miles from about 3.52 billion in the same period in 2007.

Capacity fell 11.6 percent to 4.06 billion available seat miles, from 4.59 billion in the same period a year ago.

Occupancy slipped 2.6 percentage points to a load factor of 74.1 percent.

Mesa operates contracted flights for several major carriers, including US Airways and United, and flies independently as Mesa Airlines and go!