Delta says June traffic rose 4.2 percent

ATLANTA

Delta Air Lines Inc. said on Tuesday that its June traffic rose 4.2 percent -- enough to fill almost 88 percent of its seats.

Delta, the world's largest airline, said that in June it flew 18.53 billion revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger flown one mile, on all its flights, including feeder carriers operating under the Delta name. That was up from 17.78 billion revenue passenger miles in June 2009.

Delta is the largest U.S. carrier in the Pacific, and its traffic there jumped 26 percent to 2.05 billion revenue passenger miles.

Systemwide capacity rose 1.5 percent to 21.13 billion available seat miles, from 20.81 billion a year earlier.

With traffic rising faster than Delta added seats, its planes were fuller. Load factor rose 2.2 percentage points to 87.7 percent across Delta's system. On Delta's mainline domestic flights, load factor rose 0.4 percentage points to 89 percent.

For the first half of the year, Delta traffic rose 0.3 percent to 92.26 billion revenue passenger miles. Capacity fell 2.4 percent to about 112 billion available seat miles. Load factor rose 2.2 percentage points to 82.4 percent.

Delta shares rose 7 cents to close at $11.10 on Tuesday and added 23 cents, or 2 percent, to $11.33 in after-hours trading.