Aspen's passenger count rises, but too many flights?

Figures show the number of passengers on commercial airline flights to and from Aspen is up this ski season.

But The Aspen Times reports the percentage of occupied seats is down, causing Bill Tomcich, president of the central reservations firm Stay Aspen Snowmass, to have concern about possibly of offering too many seats in the market.

"We have so much service right now that we need to be careful not to have too many seats, because we don't want to dilute the market," Tomcich said to the Times.

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Data from Aspen-Pitkin County Airport shows that among the three carriers that serve Aspen (American, Delta and United and their regional affiliates), 128,116 seats were available in January and 111,794 in February, the most since the 1994-95 ski season.

Aspen's commercial carriers combined for a 58.3% load factor in January, down from 70.9% in January 2017.

Load factor is a key industry metric that reflect the percentage of seats occupied by passengers.

"Fifty-eight percent is very low for Aspen," Tomcich added to the Times. "I expect to see a correction in the number of seats offered next January."

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report. 

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