Southwest Airlines traffic up in June

Traffic rose to 6.88 billion revenue passenger miles, from 6.83 billion a year earlier. A revenue passenger mile is a unit measuring one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity grew 5.7 percent to 8.8 billion available seat miles, from 8.32 billion in June 2007.

Load factor, an industry measure of occupancy, fell 3.9 percentage points to 78.2 percent during the month.

For the second quarter, traffic rose 4.2 percent to 19.81 billion revenue passenger miles, while capacity lifted 5.4 percent to 26.34 billion available seat miles. The passenger load factor in the second quarter fell 0.9 points to 75.2 percent.

In the first six months of the year, Southwest reported traffic rose 6.5 percent 37.4 billion revenue passenger miles, compared with 35.13 billion in the same period in 2007.

Year-to-date capacity rose 5.9 percent to 51.53 billion available seat miles, from 48.66 billion in January through June of 2007.

Occupancy edged 0.4 points higher to a load factor of 72.6 percent, from 72.2 percent in 2007.

Southwest shares rose 15 cents to $13.14 in morning trading.