Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air traffic falls in June

Alaska Air Group Inc. said Thursday that June traffic and capacity fell at its Alaska Airlines subsidiary compared with the same month last year.

Alaska Airlines flew 1.64 billion revenue passenger miles last month, a 2.6 percent drop from the 1.69 billion revenue passenger miles it flew in June 2008. A revenue passenger mile is an industry metric measuring one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity fell 4.1 percent to 2.04 billion available seat miles from 2.12 billion available seat miles.

Load factor, or occupancy, rose 1.2 percentage points to 80.7 percent from 79.5 percent.

Year-to-date, revenue passenger miles fell to 8.79 billion from 9.4 billion, while available seat miles fell to 11.37 billion from 12.32 billion and load factor rose to 77.3 percent from 76.3 percent.

At Alaska Air Group subsidiary Horizon Air, June traffic fell 9.2 percent to 226 million revenue passenger miles from 248 million, while available seat miles fell 10.8 percent to 284 million from 319 million and load factor rose 1.4 percentage points to 79.4 percent from 78 percent.

Year-to-date, revenue passenger miles at Horizon Air fell to 1.13 billion from 1.35 billion a year earlier, while available seat miles fell to 1.62 billion from 1.89 billion and load factor fell to 70.2 percent from 71.7 percent.

Shares of Alaska Air Group fell 17 cents to $18.53 in afternoon trading.