United Airlines says last month’s storms on the East Coast cost it $40 million

United Airlines says storms cost it $40 million

CHICAGO — United Airlines says last month’s back-to-back winter storms along the East Coast cost it $40 million in revenue, trumping smaller weather-related revenue losses reported by other U.S. carriers.

United’s disclosure Monday came after US Airways reported losing $30 million, Continental $25 million and Southwest $15 million. Delta and American, the nation’s two largest airlines, did not report storm-related revenue losses when they disclosed February traffic figures last week.

The storms caused the cancellation of several thousand flights, many of them in a band stretching from Washington to New York.

United parent UAL Corp. said traffic on United and its regional affiliates rose 2.1 percent, with paying passengers traveling 7.82 billion miles last month, up from 7.66 billion miles in February 2008.

Capacity fell 5.3 percent to 9.93 billion available seat miles, a measure of one seat flown one mile.

With traffic up and capacity down, total average occupancy jumped to 78.7 percent from 73 percent a year ago.

Without the help of regional affiliates, mainline United’s traffic slipped 0.5 percent, to 6.72 billion miles flown by paying passengers. United’s mainline capacity dropped 8.2 percent, and average occupancy rose 6.1 points to 79.4 percent full.

While the storms cost United lost revenue from canceled flights, they had the reverse effect in increasing revenue per available seat mile, a closely watched measure in the airline industry. That’s because with some passengers rebooking on other flights, there were fewer empty seats.

Passenger revenue per available seat mile, including regional flights, rose about 18 percent over February 2009, the airline said. The airline said about 1.5 percentage points of the gain was due to the flight cancelations and the impact of the Lufthansa strike on flights across the Atlantic.