Passenger traffic continues to rebound at NWA
Tony Kennedy
Star Tribune
Published Oct 17 2001
Passenger traffic continues to rebound at Northwest Airlines,
but the Eagan-based carrier continues to lose money, the
airline's chief executive officer said.
"While our load factor is rising, it's not enough to cover our
operating costs," Northwest CEO Richard Anderson said in a
telephone hotline message made available to employees this
week.
In late September, with a nationwide, war-and
terrorism-related travel scare in full force, Northwest's
systemwide load factor was below 60 percent. Load factor is a
measure of seat occupancy by paying customers.
For the first 11 days of October, the systemwide load factor
rose to somewhere near 70 percent, Northwest spokeswoman
Mary Beth Schubert said.
For domestic flights, NWA's load factor was 68 percent. For
transatlantic flights, it was 71.5 percent. Across the Pacific, the
load factor was 56.9 percent.
The recovery is important not only to Northwest's shareholders
but also to some 10,000 laid-off NWA employees who are
waiting for the carrier's financial crisis to end. Since the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks, all major airlines have been struggling for
their survival by overcoming vastly lower revenue and sharply
higher costs.
Anderson said the rebound in passenger traffic stemmed
mostly from leisure travelers. The airline still is waiting for
business travelers to return, he said. Business travelers are the
key to profitability for all major airlines because tickets
purchased on short notice, with no restrictions, produce the
highest yields.
As passenger loads have picked up, Northwest has continued to
operate smoothly, Anderson said. For instance, in the first 11
days of October, 88.8 percent of Northwest's domestic flights
arrived on time. In addition, NWA canceled less than 2
percent of its scheduled flights, systemwide in that period.
-- Tony Kennedy is at
tonyk@startribune.com .
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