Airlines will pack planes despite fewer fliers this summer

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Fewer Americans are expected to fly this summer, but don’t expect more empty seats as carriers pack planes to help offset surging fuel costs.

The trade group for the nation’s largest airlines yesterday forecast that 211.5 million passengers will travel on domestic carriers between June 1 and Aug. 31. That would be a 1.3 percent drop from last summer.

Airlines are reducing their carrying capacity amid slower economic growth and rising jet fuel prices, the Air Transport Association (ATA) said.

But planes will be nearly 85 percent full and delays emanating from New York-area airports will remain a problem, ATA President and Chief Executive Officer James May said. Late flights cost carriers more than $10 billion annually, a drag on profits that have them “doing all they can to avoid lengthy delays,” Mr. May said.

“It’s in our best interest to minimize those delays to the fullest extent possible,” Mr. May said. “They cost us in terms of customer loyalty … [and] real dollars.”

Some large U.S. carriers last week said they again raised ticket prices to offset surging fuel costs. Raising fares and charging for extra bags and other amenities have been the preferred coping mechanisms for airlines, which are paying about 82 percent more for jet fuel than they did a year ago.

Still, Mr. May said further fare increases this summer are “inevitable.”

Elsewhere, the current economic conditions present a “good news-bad news” scenario for international carriers that serve the U.S., said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association.

“International air traffic originating in the U.S. this summer will likely be slower … [but] the weak dollar and economic growth in other parts of the world make the U.S. an attractive destination and a good value for inbound leisure passengers,” Mr. Lott said.

The last summer that domestic airlines carried fewer passengers was 2006, which was down 1 percent from the prior year, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. But domestic airlines carried about 213.8 million passengers last summer, a record number for that period.

During last summer, the Federal Aviation Administration expanded the use of an air traffic control strategy intended to minimize the weather-related delays that led to cost savings of $68 million between May 2 and Aug. 30, agency spokesman Paul Takemoto said yesterday.

The “airspace flow program” — which was introduced in 2006 in seven high-traffic, air-travel regions in the Northeast and expanded nationwide last year — allows airlines to choose to either fly longer routes to avoid stormy weather or accept costly and aggravating delays.

But last summer’s record delays prompted the Transportation Department to impose flight caps at all three of the New York-area’s main airports this year because problems there cascade throughout the system.

New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport last year had the nation’s lowest on-time arrival rates. The flight caps are designed to result in fewer scheduled flights during peak hours and to create more options during the middle of the day.

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