Planes Fuller in 2006

Last year won't go down as the airline industry's most profitable or most memorable. But it will be known as the year of the full airplanes.

Three airlines - American Airlines Inc., United Airlines Inc. and Continental Airlines Inc. - have said they filled four out of every five seats for the entire year, and several other major carriers are reporting that their flights were more than 75 percent full in 2006.

Factoring in the early morning and late night flights with a lot of empty seats, an 80 percent load factor means that many flights during busy hours, over the summer and during holidays, had nary a seat to spare.

It wasn't so long ago that load factors of 80 percent were exceptional and occurred only during peak summer months. A decade ago, the average loads were under 70 percent for the year, and the industry didn't average loads over 60 percent until the mid-1980s.

Although the airline industry in 2006 was expected to post its first annual profit since 2000, the record loads will not equal record profits.

High fuel prices made sure of that.

A crowded airplane means "simply put, there's a lot of people on an airplane," aviation consultant Dean Hill said Friday. "It doesn't mean people are paying a lot of money for those seats."

But airlines implemented a series of fare hikes throughout the year. At the same time, many large carriers cut their capacity or grew only a little bit, allowing them to keep demand high for the available seats.

In the past, good times for the industry have spurred a surge in airplane orders. That hasn't happened this cycle.

For one thing, the times aren't that good. If the industry did turn a profit in 2006, it will follow five years of massive losses that reached $35 billion for U.S. carriers.

In addition, Mr. Hill said, the big airlines are usually the ones that put in the really big airplane orders, and "they don't have any money. They're not buying any airplanes."

In addition, the carriers that went through bankruptcy usually trimmed their capacity, he said.

A few carriers, including Southwest Airlines Co., are busily adding airplanes as fast as they can acquire them. But others are restraining capacity, including Northwest Airlines Inc. and Delta Air Lines Inc., the two biggest carriers still operating in bankruptcy court.

Delta operated 6 percent less capacity in 2006 than in 2005, and through November, Northwest's capacity was down 7.4 percent compared with the first 11 months of 2005.

Fort Worth-based American plans to operate about 1 percent less capacity in 2007 than in 2006, following a 1.1 percent reduction from the year before.

"Demand, as you know, has been strong," American's treasurer, Beverly K. Goulet, said at an industry conference in November. "And by keeping capacity growth in check, we've continued to achieve record load factors and are recouping some of the costs of historically high fuel prices."

Dallas-based Southwest, whose load factors usually lag behind those of other big carriers, said Friday it filled 73.1 percent of its seats last year, up 2.3 percentage points. Its traffic growth of 12.4 percent outstripped its 8.8 percent jump in capacity.

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