Hawaiian Airlines said Monday that traffic in May rose 1.6 percent, flying fuller flights as it reduced capacity.
Hawaiian, a unit of Hawaiian Holdings Inc., said it flew 693.7 million revenue passenger miles, or one passenger flown one mile, during the month. That was up from 682.6 million revenue passenger miles in May 2009.
Capacity, or the number of seat miles available for purchase, fell 0.9 percent to 811.7 million, from 819.5 million a year earlier.
Airlines have generally been seeing traffic pick up as the economy has improved. With more people flying on fewer available seats, occupancy has risen. Hawaiian said its load factor was up 2.2 percentage points to 85.5 percent for May.
For the first five months of the year, Hawaiian said traffic fell 0.9 percent to 3.28 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity fell further though, 2.8 percent, to 3.89 billion available seat miles. That helped load factor rise 1.6 percentage points to 84.3 percent.
Hawaiian Holdings shares fell 5 cents to $6.91 in afternoon trading.
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