Air Canada planes fly fuller, WestJet's slightly emptier

(Reuters) - Air Canada, Canada's biggest airlines, said passenger levels for March remained strong compared to a year earlier, while the country's No. 2 carrier, WestJet Airlines, reported a fall in its numbers.

Air Canada said its load factor, or the percentage of available seats filled with paying customers, rose to 83.5 percent in March from 81.5 percent a year earlier.

Traffic increased faster, by 3.4 percent, as the capacity, or available seat miles, rose 1.0 percent.

The company reported increased traffic in the domestic, the Pacific and the U.S. trans-border markets.

Calgary-based WestJet Airlines said its load factor, or the percentage of available seats filled with paying customers, fell 0.1 percentage points to 86.1 percent.

Traffic for Calgary-based WestJet increased 8.2 percent, while capacity, measured in available seat miles, rose 8.4 percent from March 2012.

Porter Airlines, which competes with Air Canada and WestJet on certain short-haul flights in Canada and a handful of routes to the United States, said load factor slipped 1.7 percentage points to 58.1 percent.

Capacity for Porter Airlines rose 0.7 percent and traffic fell 2.1 percent for March, from a year earlier.

WestJet shares fell 1.5 percent to close at C$24.81, while Air Canada shares ended the day down about 1 percent at C$3.81 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Krithika Krishnamurthy and Sandhya Vijayan in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal)

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Canada December budget gap up slightly; fiscal year-to-date down

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's federal budget gap widened slightly in December from a year earlier, but the deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was still down 19 percent, the finance department said on Friday.

The monthly Fiscal Monitor said the government spent C$572 million ($561 million) more in December than it took in. The gap in December 2011 was C$538 million .

For the period April to December, the deficit shrank to C$12.99 billion from C$16.06 billion in the same period in 2011. This amounts to a fraction of the budget deficits in other leading Western countries after adjusting for the size of the economies.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he plans to balance the budget by 2015, although he has conceded the heavily discounted price for Canadian crude oil is hurting government revenues.

Government revenues rose in December from a year earlier, but the 2.8 percent increase was smaller than the 3.8 percent rise in program expenses.

In his November fiscal update, Flaherty projected a deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of C$26.0 billion, including an adjustment for risk. For the year that will start April 2013, he forecast a deficit of C$16.5 billion.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)

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Canada December budget gap up slightly; fiscal year-to-date down

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's federal budget gap widened slightly in December from a year earlier, but the deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was still down 19 percent, the finance department said on Friday.

The monthly Fiscal Monitor said the government spent C$572 million ($561 million) more in December than it took in. The gap in December 2011 was C$538 million .

For the period April to December, the deficit shrank to C$12.99 billion from C$16.06 billion in the same period in 2011. This amounts to a fraction of the budget deficits in other leading Western countries after adjusting for the size of the economies.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he plans to balance the budget by 2015, although he has conceded the heavily discounted price for Canadian crude oil is hurting government revenues.

Government revenues rose in December from a year earlier, but the 2.8 percent increase was smaller than the 3.8 percent rise in program expenses.

In his November fiscal update, Flaherty projected a deficit for the 2012-13 fiscal year of C$26.0 billion, including an adjustment for risk. For the year that will start April 2013, he forecast a deficit of C$16.5 billion.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)

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