Southwest Airlines, which is Port Columbus International Airport’s biggest carrier, was able to close the final month of the summer vacation season with a gain in passenger traffic. The airline was able to outpace its average performance in the first eight months of 2010.

The airline reported just this past Wednesday that it flew 7.12 billion revenue passenger miles in August. This is a number that was up 6 percent from the 6.69 billion that was seen in August of 2009. Revenue passenger miles, which is a standard industry gauge of traffic, measures a paying passenger flying 1 mile.

The airline’s capacity grew as well by 4 percent went compared to last year. The company’s load factor, or the percentage of seats that were filled per flight, rose 2 percent to 82.3 percent. This is good news for the airline since the more seats an airline can sell per flight the better.

For the first eight months of 2010, Southwest’s traffic was up some 3 percent from 2009 numbers. August traffic data for Port Columbus International Airport is not yet available. However, statistics through July showed Southwest Airlines’ activity at the airport stagnated, falling 0.8 percent. These new numbers could be a sign that Southwest Airlines’ traffic at Port Columbus has finally started to recover.

Southwest Airlines, which is based out of Dallas, carries about 27 percent of all passengers at Port Columbus. The airline has 23 daily nonstop flights out of the airport. It is easy to see how big of an impact the airline has at this airport. However, Southwest Airlines has a big impact on the United States airline industry as a whole.