United Airlines reported steady corporate travel volume as consolidated passenger revenue grew 3.6 percent year over year in the third quarter to $10.5 billion. Domestic passenger revenue increased 3.9 percent to $6.6 billion amid a 1.7 percent increase in capacity, and revenue rose across all regions except transpacific routes. Yield rose 2.3 percent on domestic routes and increased on all international regions outside the Pacific.
Revenue on transpacific routes decreased 1.1 percent amid a 2.3 percent increase in capacity. Lower demand due to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong played a role in that decrease, as did lower demand to Beijing and Shanghai, said chief commercial officer and EVP Andrew Nocella. The carrier suspended its service between Hong Kong and Chicago last month, and Nocella said demand there remains weak but has stabilized.
United's strongest third-quarter performance was on routes to Latin America, on which passenger revenue increased 7.7 percent year over year to $843 million, despite little change in capacity. Routes to Mexico and Brazil were particularly strong, Nocella said, and yield rose 5.9 percent in the region.
Transatlantic revenue increased 3.6 percent to $2 billion as capacity rose 2.8 percent. U.S.-point-of-sale performance outweighed weaker performance abroad, he said. Looking ahead, United's corporate travel volumes are "not growing rapidly, but they're steady," Nocella said. During the first three quarters of 2019, United signed 500 corporate accounts, a lot of which never previously had contracts with the carrier.
United's total traffic and capacity each increased 1.9 percent year over year in the third quarter, and load factor rose 0.1 percentage points to 86.1 percent. Total yield went up 1.6 percent.
United reported a net income of $1 billion in the third quarter, up from $833 million in the third quarter of 2018.
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