We knew it was going to be ugly, and yep, it is.

Frontier issued its December traffic release tonight.

Revenue passenger miles decreased 2.2% to 606,723,000 for December 2006 from the same period last year. Available seat miles increased 1.7% to 889,373,000 for December 2006 from the same period last year. This resulted in a load factor for December 2006 of 68.2%, a decrease of 2.7 points from December 2005, when the airline reported a load factor of 70.9%.

CEO Jeff Potter added the frosting to the mess that is going to be the airline’s financial result for December, as he added in the release,

“December passenger revenue performance was negatively impacted by approximately $11 million due to two major December snowstorms, one of which completely shut down our primary hub, Denver International Airport (DIA), for almost 48 hours,” said Jeff Potter, President and CEO of Frontier Airlines. “In addition, while we are unable to provide a definitive snowstorm cost estimate at this time, we do anticipate that there will be significant variable expenses, such as glycol expense ($1.1 million in storm related costs), partially offset by variable costs we didn’t incur while the airport was shut down. Combined with these net additional storm related expenses, our loss of storm related available seat miles (ASMs) in the December quarter will result in higher unit costs than previously anticipated.”

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