JOC Staff | Aug 04, 2009 2:46PM EDT
United Airlines had its busiest month for freight in nine months in July, with the carrier’s traffic growing 5 percent from the month before.
Freight traffic at United still fell 17 percent compared to July 2008, but even that was the smallest year-over-year decline the airline has reported so far this year.
The traffic, measured in freight ton miles flown, was the most United has recorded since last November.
For the first seven months of 2009, United’s belly freight business is down 28.3 percent. But the traffic also has grown on a month-to-month basis in all but one month, and July’s figure of just short of 117 million freight ton miles was 33 percent better than the low point United reached in January.
With air cargo pricing depressed, United’s cargo revenue fell 46.2 percent in the first six months of 2009, compared to the same period a year ago, to $245 million.
