United Continental June traffic falls 0.9 percent

CHICAGO (AP) — United Continental Holdings Inc. said on Friday that June traffic fell 0.9 percent, with the biggest drops showing up in overseas traffic.

The company operates United and Continental airlines and reports their results on a combined basis.

Overall traffic was 19.21 billion revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger flown one mile.

Domestic traffic fell 0.9 percent. International traffic was down 1.2 percent, with drops of 2 percent across the Atlantic and Pacific, while traffic to Latin America rose 2.7 percent.

Capacity rose 0.6 percent to 22.3 billion available seat miles. Domestic capacity fell 0.5 percent, but international capacity was up 1.3 percent.

With the company adding more seats than passengers, more of those seats were empty. Load factor fell 1.3 percentage points to 86.1 percent.

Cargo hauling dropped, too. Revenue ton miles fell 16.9 percent to 215.4 million for June.

A key measure of revenue, called passenger revenue per available seat mile, rose 4 percent to 5 percent for the month.

Generally, passenger revenue has been rising more sharply because airlines have raised fares to cover higher fuel costs. But in June, United Continental had to account for revenue sharing in its joint venture with other airlines for flying passengers to Europe. All of the second-quarter impact of the revenue sharing was booked in June.

For the first half of the year, traffic has fallen 0.5 percent to 101.21 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity rose 1.2 percent to 125.18 billion available seat miles. Load factor fell 1.4 percentage points to 80.9 percent.