Delta Air Lines said its passenger traffic for February was 5.95 billion revenue passenger miles, up 2.2 percent over February 1994.
Capacity was up 0.1 percent to 9.69 billion available seat miles, and load factor rose to 61.36 percent from 60.06 percent.Domestic traffic was up 3.1 percent to 4.66 billion, and foreign traffic was down 0.9 percent to 1.29 billion. Domestic capacity was up 2.5 percent to 7.57 billion while foreign capacity was off 7.9 percent to 2.12 billion.
Delta has been looking for ways to cut costs. It reported in January a loss of $18 million for its second quarter ending Dec. 31, compared with a loss of $141 million in the year-ago quarter, which included a $112 million charge for its early retirement program.
Sales for Delta, the nation's No. 3 carrier after United and American, were down slightly to $2.92 billion from $2.95 billion in the 1993 quarter.
Delta announced last spring it will cut between 12,000 and 15,000 jobs by 1997 as part of a program dubbed "Leadership 7.5" to return it to profitability and lower annual costs by $2 billion. It has been hit hard by problems in its European markets and domestic competition from low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines.
Leadership 7.5 refers to a target of operating at a cost of 7.5 cents per available seat mile. The company's cost per available seat mile for the quarter was 8.94 cents, a 3 percent drop from 1993.