United still plagued by trans-Atlantic traffic falloff

United's regional carrier operations are shrinking as traffic across the Atlantic continues in a tailspin. Those are the two major takeaways from the January operations report the Chicago-based carrier released late Wednesday. The new data shows United's regional traffic in January shrank 3.4%, while mainline traffic was up 6.9% year over year. Overall domestic traffic was up 4.7% year over year in January. Internationally, the big falloff was in trans-Atlantic travel, down 2.5% year over year last month. The continued drop-off in travel to Europe was offset somewhat by stronger traffic across the Pacific (up 6.1% year over year) and to Latin America (also up 6.1%). Consolidated traffic for United's entire route system for the month of January was up 4.0% year over year, as consolidated capacity grew by 4.7%. The biggest growth in capacity came in the Pacific market (up 6.0 percent year over year) and Latin America (up 6.8% year over year). United said the growth in overall capacity was partly fueled by a much higher flight completion rate in January of this year compared to a year ago.<br/>