Delta Air Lines (DAL -2.62%) did fairly well in terms of operations in the first full month of this summer. The company has unveiled its metrics for July, revealing that consolidated passenger unit revenue grew by 3% over the same month last year. Revenue passenger miles advanced by 1.7% during the same time frame to hit 19.4 billion. The tally for available seat miles also climbed, by 2.7% to 22.3 billion.
One slight laggard was Delta's load factor (i.e., the average "occupancy" of its planes). This figure slipped by 0.8 percentage points on a year-over-year basis to land at 87% in July. Another was the total number of passengers boarded, which was 15.6 million, or 0.2% down from the July 2012 figure.
