Mesa’s passenger numbers up

Mesa Air Group's interisland airline go! said yesterday its passenger numbers rose to a record 87,577 in May.

That represents a 1.3 percent increase from April's 86,417, the first full month after the shutdown of Aloha Airlines, and a 51 percent jump from last year's 57,935.

The carrier's load factor rose to 70.7 percent, an increase of 2.19 percentage points from last month and 7.4 percentage points from last year. The carrier added three 50-seat CRJ-200s to its fleet in April, but has since sent one back to the mainland because it had two spares. It now operates seven aircraft.

Available seat miles, or one seat transported one mile, inched up less than a percentage point to 18.28 million from last month, and 39 percent from May 2007's 13.12 million.

Go! operates 90 flights a day between Honolulu and Kahului, Lihue, Kona and Hilo, an increase of about 50 percent from before Aloha's March 31 shutdown. Earlier this month, go! added an additional weekday roundtrip between Honolulu and Kahului in response to demand from business travelers.

Revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger transported one mile, rose a quarter of a percent to 12.81 million from last month. It was a 54 percent jump from last year's 8.3 million.

Hawaiian Airlines, which reported its May numbers on June 9, saw a 26.2 percent bump in systemwide passengers to 740,865 from 587,017 a year ago. Its load factor, or percentage of seats filled, slipped 0.9 points to 85.7 percent. Available seat miles totaled 812.2 million, up from 776.6 million a year ago. Revenue passenger miles rose 3.5 percent to 696.2 million from 672.7 million.