Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Bob Mcadoo - Avondale Partners LLC.
Bob Mcadoo - Avondale Partners LLC
One of the things we’ve talked about is the pool of tickets that were sold prior to the demise of your competitors that were sold at fares lower than today’s fares and how those burn off over time. I assume that obviously the yields and RASM in April was somewhat different than it was in June as you had more and more of the higher priced tickets towards the end. We’ve got this overall number of RASM up 20% and Transpacific. Can you kind of tell us in round numbers how that was in the latter half of the quarter versus the early part of the quarter that maybe on balance came out 20 overall and similarly with the 40% number in the short haul?
Mark B. Dunkerley
First of all, let me draw a distinction between the longer haul part of our business and the shorter haul part of our business. The longer haul part of our business books considerably earlier than does the short haul part of our business. But turning to the long haul, it was the case that we had some bookings on the books both before Aloha and ATA went away that were then satisfied for travel later and also remember before the most significant increase in the price of fuel which was in the month of May. What we’ve seen is basically in the first couple of months after the demise of Aloha and ATA, we were able to raise fares. The average fare was diluted to some degree by the bookings we already had on the books but we were able to fill the airplane pretty full with pretty high load factors. What we’re seeing going forward is that the fares are higher but that load factors are coming down. What we attempt to do each and every day is to strike the right balance between those two and the kind of RASM indications that Peter gave was really our best guess as to where we think the right sweet spot’s going to be between load factor and fares.
Interisland there’s much less of that kind of lag because people don’t book nearly as far in advance for Interisland travel so there will have been a bit of that effect but not much. I think the biggest issue in Interisland as Peter said we’re comparing to a period last year where the fare war was in its full throes. So that really accounts for most of the percentage increase.
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