go! posts increase in June passengers
go! put more passengers on its planes in June than in any of the 10 previous months as $1 anniversary fares and other promotions helped boost traffic.
The interisland carrier of Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group Inc. said yesterday that it filled 72.1 percent of its seats in June -- the second-best full month ever since its load factor of 73.9 percent in July 2006, its first full month of operation.
The only other time go! had a higher load factor than that was June 2006, when it operated for just three weeks after its June 9 startup with fewer planes, filling 82.5 percent of its seats.
Go!, which operates five Bombardier CRJ-200 50-seat aircraft, transported 63,965 passengers in June, its second-highest total ever behind the 69,680 who flew in July 2006.
The airline's available seat miles, or total seats multiplied by the total number of miles flown, was 12.8 million. Its revenue passenger miles, or the total miles flown by paying passengers, was 9.2 million.
However, go!'s on-time arrival rate last month slipped to 85.4 percent, while its overall completion rate for its flights was 99.4 percent. The previous month, 91.8 percent of its flights were on time.
Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha Airlines had on-time rates of 92.8 percent and 88.4 percent, respectively, for May, the most recent month for which data is available.
Also, for the first time, Mesa yesterday broke out additional information for its go! operations. Mesa said that if go! was an independently operated airline, it would have ranked second among major airlines for mishandled bags in May with only 3.26 bags per 1,000 passengers, according to recent data released in the Air Travel Consumer Report by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Hawaiian was first at 2.70 reports per 1,000 passengers and Aloha ranked fourth with 4.03. As a parent company, Mesa was 19th with 9.95.
Mesa also said go! had zero customer complaints in May and would have ranked first ahead of the 20 airlines in the report's rankings. Aloha had one complaint and ranked second (0.31 percent per 100,000 enplanements) while Hawaiian had two complaints and ranked third (0.34 percent). Mesa, the parent company, had seven complaints and ranked ninth (0.58 percent).
Separately, Mesa said yesterday its nationwide load factor increased to 76.6 from 76.4 percent in June 2006 while the number of passengers it carried rose 13.6 percent to 8.4 million from 7.4 million.