SkyEurope's February

In comparison to Ryanair's performance in February, SkyEurope this past month saw greater increases in passengers numbers and greater declines in load factor. All in all, it was a very dramatic month for the Slovak low-cost carrier. SkyEurope managed a very impressive 25.5 percent spike in passengers in February 2008 against February 2007 stats. Less impressive—in fact, mind-dizzyingly so—was their load factor drop of 18.1 percent, from last February's very strong 85.3 percent to this February's tepid 67.2 percent.

The airline attributes this free-fall of a drop to a huge increase in seat capacity and "a focus on continuous yield growth." Fair enough, though these are hardly the sorts of goals that axiomatically trigger load factor decline.

I'm not shy about the fact that I'm a fan of SkyEurope. I hope that these numbers don't scare investors and analysts. I'm crossing my fingers that the airline will continue to hone its product and deepen its route map to include more underserved airports in Central and Eastern Europe. Profitably, of course.