Southwest Airlines August traffic down 5.2 percent

The Dallas-based carrier said it flew 6.63 billion revenue passenger miles in the month, compared with 7 billion revenue passenger miles flown in August 2007.

A revenue passenger mile is a widely watched industry measurement accounting for one paying passenger flown one mile.

Capacity increased 1.5 percent to 8.9 billion available seat miles from 8.7 billion available seat miles. Load factor, or occupancy, slipped to 74.6 percent from 80 percent.

In the year to date, Southwest flew 50.92 billion revenue passenger miles, up 3.6 percent from the 49.17 billion revenue passenger miles recorded for the same period of 2007. Available seat miles increased to 69.44 billion from 66.06 billion. Load factor was 73.3 percent, compared with 74.4 percent for the same period last year.