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A United Airlines jet takes off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. Airlines have cut capacity to offset high fuel costs and the recession.

ap file photo

DALLAS — At just about any major U.S. airport, airplanes crowd the taxiways and gates and line up for their turn to depart. There seems to be an overwhelming, ever-increasing number of flights.

But the truth is that most large U.S. carriers are smaller than they were last year or the year before, and some have shrunk to their size from two decades ago.

Consider this:

• American Airlines Inc.’s 2009 capacity, measured in available seat miles flown, fell to its lowest level since 1991. The drop happened despite American’s 1998 acquisition of Reno Air Inc. and its 2001 purchase of Trans World Airlines Inc. assets.

• United Airlines Inc.’s capacity last year was its lowest since 1990.

• The combined capacity of Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Inc. dropped to 1991 levels. The carriers merged in 2008 under Delta’s name.

• Capacity at US Airways Inc. and America West Airlines Inc., which merged in 2005, declined to the lowest level since 1989. The combined company flies as US Airways.

Even Southwest Airlines Co. and AirTran Airways Inc., which have had a high-growth philosophy throughout their histories, shrank their operations in 2009.

Among the nation’s nine largest carriers, only JetBlue Airways Corp. flew more capacity in 2009 than the year before — 0.4 percent more.

While airlines have cut flights, employees and fleets, their passenger traffic hasn’t declined as much as their capacity.

Seven of the nine biggest carriers — with Delta and JetBlue the exceptions — filled a greater percentage of their seats in 2009 than in 2008. Southwest jumped its load factor 4.8 points to 76 percent, the highest in its history.

The 2008-09 reductions in flying were in direct response to record-high fuel prices in 2008 and the deep economic slump that hit the nation and world, airline executives say.

“We made the decision to rather significantly reduce our capacity in the face of $150-a-barrel oil,” said Gerard Arpey, American’s chairman, president and chief executive.

“Since then, there’s been no real motivating factor to want to add capacity in the environment of a shrinking economy.”

Arpey, speaking to the Professional Convention Management Association, said American officials “are not planning any dramatic capacity cuts, but on the other hand, we’re not thinking about adding a lot of capacity in a very weak economy.”

Speaking at an industry conference in December, AirTran chief financial officer Arne G. Haak said he expected industry capacity to be flat to perhaps up a few percentage points in 2010.

He called that “a very benign capacity environment and one of the best capacity environments we’ve had in the last 10 years.”

“That bodes very well for the industry for a recovery,” Haak said. “It bodes very well for a domestic recovery as well as an international recovery because the domestic capacity cuts have actually been bigger.”

Aviation consultant Darryl Jenkins, who is in the midst of a detailed study of airline industry capacity, said the shrinkage was absolutely necessary.

Fares aren’t covering airlines’ costs, he said. Reducing capacity and keeping it low will reduce the supply of seats, allowing airlines to raise fares to moneymaking levels, Jenkins said.

“Since this business is cyclical, if we keep (capacity) at a low level, during the good times we can make a lot of money and during the bad times just lose a little bit of money,” Jenkins said, “which is the opposite of what we’ve done before.”

Jenkins says the government should regulate U.S. airline capacity as a way to reduce supply and drive up prices. The unanswered questions are how the government would do that and how it would treat growing airlines vs. mature airlines.

Labor unions wouldn’t like government regulation, Jenkins said, because ultimately it would mean fewer planes and people flying and therefore fewer airline jobs.

Despite the rapid growth of AirTran, JetBlue and Southwest during the past decade, the nine carriers (plus merger partners) shed more than 125,000 jobs between 1999 and 2008, dropping 27 percent to around 335,000, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Wendy Morse, head of the Air Line Pilots Association at United, has criticized United’s strategy to park airplanes and reduce capacity. United’s employment was down 44 percent from 1999 to 51,536 in 2008.

In recent remarks, Morse said that it was “unacceptable for United Airlines to continue downsizing if we are to be a successful enterprise in the future.”

“You simply cannot shrink to profitability,” she said.

Jenkins said that airlines would benefit if the government put limits on industry capacity, but it wouldn’t help their passengers.

“The consumer loses big time on this one,” he said. “They’ll be paying a lot more.”