Hawaiian Airlines says August traffic up 14.3 percent with more passengers in fuller planes

Hawaiian Airlines August traffic rises 14.3 pct

HONOLULU — Hawaiian Airlines said Tuesday that its August traffic jumped 14.3 percent, pushing occupancy on its planes up to 88 percent.

The Honolulu-based airline flew 840.1 million revenue passenger miles up from 734.8 million in August 2009. A revenue passenger mile represents one paying passenger flown one mile. Capacity rose 11 percent to 954.5 million available seat miles, from 860.1 million a year earlier.

With traffic rising faster than seats available, planes were 2.6 percentage points fuller: Hawaiian’s load factor totaled 88 percent.

For the first eight months of the year, Hawaiian said traffic is up 3.7 percent to almost 5.7 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity has risen 1.7 percent to 6.67 billion available seat miles, and occupancy also is up 1.7 percentage points to 85.4 percent.

Shares of Hawaiian Holdings Inc., the carrier’s parent, fell 27 cents, or 5 percent, to $4.95 in afternoon trading.