Frontier Airlines Says Sept. Traffic Fell Slightly

DENVER (AP) — Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. said on Thursday that its September traffic fell 0.4 percent, a little more than capacity.

The Denver-based carrier said it flew 709.4 million revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger flown one mile, during September. That was down from 711.9 million in September 2008.

Capacity edged down 0.2 percent to 858.2 million available seat miles, from 859.9 million, a year ago. That resulted in a slight drop in occupancy, or load factor, by 0.1 percentage points to 82.7 percent.

Frontier's regional subsidiary, Lynx Aviation, saw traffic jump 27.4 percent to 41 million revenue passenger miles, as capacity rose 2.6 percent to 53.5 million available seat miles. Load factor increased to 76.7 percent from 61.8 percent.

For the first nine months of the year, Frontier said its traffic fell 14.5 percent to about 6.6 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity dropped 14 percent to 8.04 billion available seat miles, while load factor declined to 82.1 percent from 82.6 percent.

At Lynx, traffic rose 4.9 percent to 289.5 million revenue passenger miles for the first nine months of the year. Capacity added 2.8 percent to 448.3 million available seat miles. Load factor rose to 64.6 percent from 63.3 percent.

Frontier emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 1 as a unit of Republic Airways Holdings Inc. On Thursday afternoon Republic shares fell a penny to $8.79.