For Southwest Airlines, the numbers are down all over the place. The low-cost carrier flew 5.1 billion revenue passenger miles (RPMs) in February 2009 – a 6 percent drop from the 5.4 million in February 2008. Available seat miles were down 6.5 percent to 7.4 billion. This continues January’s trend. RPMs for the first two months of the year are down 6.2 percent (from 10.9 billion RPMs to 10.2 RPMs).
So, what does this mean in cash? Southwest’s revenue softened from January to February, with business travel one of the major culprits. The drops are hardly catastrophic, but they do suggest a tough year for the airline … as if we needed the data to know that.