Feeling Cramped On That Flight?

Delta Air Lines today released its June traffic results, the first for the month reported by a major airline. They indicate that airlines are continuing to constrict, while planes were continuing to fly near record load-factors as the summer travel season commenced.

Delta flew 1.5 percent fewer seats domestically in June, compared with June 2010. Its domestic load factor, the percentage of seats filled by paying customers, was 86.5 percent -- a percentage that would have been considered astonishing in the industry only a few years ago, but is now routine. (Last June, the Delta domestic load factor was 87.6 percent. Load factors over 80 percent, though, indicate that most planes are flying totally full most of the time, as we all know).

We'll soon see what the other airlines report for June.

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