Although Continental's March numbers look generally good, first-quarter domestic yields are forecast to be down 5%-6%, and the airline says it will again post a loss in the quarter.

Domestic bookings are strong through March, and load factor for the month is expected to increase by more than six percentage points, Continental said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday. Domestic bookings for April are running slightly behind last year's as Easter falls in March, rather than April, this year.

Transatlantic bookings for March are about the same as last year. Bookings for April are down several points, although April's transatlantic load factor is forecast to be flat. Transatlantic yields will be up 4%-5% for the quarter, Continental said.

Latin American bookings are also up in March but flat for April, load factor will be up 2-3 points and yields will be down 1%-2%. In Pacific markets, April bookings are up, and yield is forecast to increase by several points on flat load factor.

Consolidated capacity is likely to be up 4% in the first quarter, with a 3.5% drop in mainline domestic capacity, balanced by 14% growth in regional capacity and 17.5% growth in transatlantic capacity. Full-year consolidated capacity will grow 6.2%, with domestic mainline capacity up 0.3%.

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Southwest reported that its load factor took a hit in April, dropping 7.1 percentage points to 69.1%.

The load factor drop is "no cause for alarm yet" because Southwest predicted that April traffic would suffer from an early Easter, said Gary Chase of Lehman Brothers. However, Chase noted that second-quarter revenue "looks to have started out a touch on the light side."

In order for Southwest to meet its forecast of a unit revenue drop of up to 5% for April, yields would have to improve by almost 4.8% for the month, Chase said. It is "not hard to imagine" some yield gain, but 5% could be on the high side, he said. Flat unit revenue in the second quarter "seems exceedingly unlikely," said Chase.

April capacity grew 13.2% to 7 billion available seat miles (ASMs), while traffic was up 2.5% to 4.8 billion revenue passenger miles (RPMs). For the four months ending April 30, Southwest traffic rose 9.5% to 18 billion RPMs, with capacity up 10.9% to 27.2 billion and load factor down 0.8 points to 66.4%.