Airlines beef up their schedules

Nov. 29, 2010
More seats are available as carriers bet on recovery.

Airlines are adding seats and flights, cautiously betting that the optimistic travel outlook the industry has had for much of the year will continue.

In November, the 10 largest U.S. airlines scheduled 2.7% more seats for passengers than the year before, according to a USA TODAY analysis of flight data provided by aviation research firm OAG-The Official Airline Guide. Nine of the 10 carriers added seats by increasing the number of flights or moving to bigger planes.

JetBlue led the pack with a 7.6% increase; Delta Air Lines added 5%.

With signs of improvement in the economy, travel demand, particularly from the corporate sector, is on the rise. After three years of retrenching in the face of higher fuel costs and fewer travelers, airlines are beefing up capacity incrementally on profitable routes. They're adding slowly so as not to have to lower fares. They're adding seats on international routes more quickly than on domestic routes.

For travelers, the bottom line is fares will rise if demand continues to outpace the new supply.

"It won't rise by leaps and bounds," says Rick Seaney of FareCompare.com. "It'll be more incremental and will reflect both capacity and oil (prices)." Seaney says the airlines have "gotten smarter" about managing their business so as not to lose money.

"We're growing in profitable markets. We're not flooding the seats with low (fares) to manufacture a competitive situation," JetBlue spokeswoman Jenny Dervin says. "The overall supply and demand is in good ratio." Much of JetBlue's added capacity comes from additional flights to the Caribbean and in the Boston market, Dervin says. Other carriers are also sharply increasing international flights.

*Delta, whose traffic rose 8.6% in October from a year earlier, boosted available seat miles by 9.5%. Its international capacity grew 13% vs. 7.3% for domestic. It expanded its spring schedule to Asia and Europe, including new flights to China, London's Heathrow, Paris and Amsterdam.

*American Airlines, whose October traffic rose 5.2%, saw its load factor rise slightly to 83.6% despite flying with more seats. Its international capacity grew 10.9% vs. 0.7% domestic.

*US Airways increased capacity by 5.6% in October, including 51.3% for Latin America and 13.4% for Europe. Its domestic operation grew only 1.5%.

Skyrocketing international airfares -- up 30% to 50% from a year ago in the fall -- largely explain the carriers' aggressive moves, Seaney says. Domestic fares are about 15% higher than a year ago.

Contributing: Barbara Hansen