American Airlines and US Airways posted their combined May passenger figures last week. Here’s what jumps out:
May 2015 Atlantic load factor: 76.7 percent
May 2014 Atlantic load factor: 79.9 percent
2015 January – May Atlantic load factor: 72.7 percent
2014 January – May Atlantic load factor: 75.5 percent
Ouch. This explains why US Airways is reducing Charlotte-London Heathrow flights this coming winter from two a day (= 14 a week) to 10 a week. And if the rest of the summer continues to be as disappointing as May was over the Atlantic for the airlines, then there’s a very good chance we could see some existing summer-seasonal flights from Charlotte to Europe not return in 2016 or operate on a smaller aircraft. Charlotte is the low-hanging fruit on transatlantic service for American/US Airways as it’s a smaller market to Europe as compared to the airlines’ other big hubs. And we’ve seen this trend before — US Airways overexpanded to Europe last summer, saw a big drop in their load factor, and responded by cutting three of the new routes from Charlotte to Europe this summer.
