DENVER—Frontier Airlines said late Thursday night that its February traffic plunged 19.9 percent, joining a long list of carriers reporting a slowdown in demand for air travel.
Paying passengers flew 596.7 million miles in February, down from 744.8 million miles a year earlier.
Capacity was cut 15.4 percent to 810.6 million available seat miles from 957.6 million miles in February 2008.
With traffic falling faster than capacity, occupancy or load factor declined to 73.6 percent from 77.8 percent a year earlier.
Yield, or revenue per mile flown by paying customers slipped 1.4 percent to 9.81 cents per mile, and unit revenue, or revenue as a ratio of capacity, fell 6.7 percent to 7.22 cents per available seat mile. Both are closely watched performance measurements in the airline industry.
Sister carrier Lynx Aviation reported that traffic fell 15.7 percent to 23.3 million revenue passenger miles, capacity dropped 9.4 percent to 43.1 million available seat miles, and load factor declined to 54.1 percent from 58.2 percent a year earlier.
Both are owned by Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc.
Frontier is the second-largest carrier in Denver but has been hurt since Southwest entered the market. Frontier filed for bankruptcy protection last year, and it said this week that Republic Airways Holdings Inc. has committed to provide it with $40 million in debtor-in-possession financing, which Frontier would use to replace a loan due in April.
