By The Canadian Press

CALGARY - WestJet Airlines Ltd. (TSX:WJA) reported improvements in passenger traffic and fewer empty seats on its flights last month compared with a year ago, when the impact of the global recession began to grip Canadian consumers.

The Calgary-based airline said Wednesday there was a 0.3 per cent increase in passenger traffic, as measured by revenue passenger miles or RPM.

Load factor, a measure of how much available capacity is used, improved to 77.3 per cent in October, an increase of 1.5 percentage points from a year earlier.

Available seat miles, a measure of capacity, was reduced by 1.8 cent year-to-year.

"We are encouraged by our year-over-year improvements in October's load factor and RPMs," WestJet president and CEO Sean Durfy said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Air Canada reported a small increase in the proportion of empty seats on its flights compared with a year ago as passenger traffic fell faster than the airline cut capacity.

Air Canada reported a load factor of 79.6 per cent on a consolidated basis with its regional partner Jazz, compared with 80.2 per cent a year ago.

System traffic fell 1.3 per cent, while capacity was cut 0.5 per cent.

"This result is close to last year's record load factor for the same month and underscores our continued disciplined approach to managing capacity," Air Canada president and chief executive Calin Rovinescu said in statement.

"In this difficult economic environment, our ongoing stable load factor is also a reflection of our employees' hard work providing a level of service that is earning our customers' loyalty."

For the year to date, Air Canada reported a load factor of 81.1 per cent compared with 81.7 per cent for the same period last year.

Traffic is down 6.3 per cent, while capacity is down 5.7 per cent.

For the year to date, WestJet has recorded 11.47 billion revenue passenger miles, including nearly 1.1 billion in October - which is typically a slow month for airlines because summer vacations have ended and holiday travel hasn't begun.

WestJet's fleet capacity has been reduced by 2.1 per cent in the first 10 months of this year, compared with the same time in 2008.