The company has reported that 5.6 billion revenue passenger miles were flown in February 2011 alone. This is a 13 percent increase from the mere 5 billion RPMs that were flown in the same time period last year. There was also an 8.6% increase in available seat miles from last February’s 6.8 billion. February’s load factor stands at 76.9% which is 6% higher than last year’s 73.9%. This news may be comforting for those in the airline industry as the passenger revenue per available seat mile is estimated to have grown from eight to nine percent when compared to that of last February.

In the first two months of 2011, Southwest has seen a significant increase in RPMs. So far there have been 11.9 billion, which is a 13.1 percent increase from last year’s 10.5. ASMs increased from 14.4 billion to 15.5 billion and the YTD load factor has leaped from 72.9 to 76.4 percent.