Seat Factor

Often used interchangeably with load factor (though not technically similar).

Very simply, it's the percentage of seats an airline manages to fill with paying passengers.

Or if you speak maths, it's number of passengers divided by number of seats.

Some typical load factors:

a) British Airways for April 2008 - 70.5%
b) Singapore Airlines in Financial Year 07/08 - 80.3%
c) High Speed Trains (TGV in 2006) - 75%

You can tell an airline person (if you couldn't already with his constant usage of abbreviations and 3-letter city codes) when he thinks of everything in terms of load factors.

"We went to watch Kung Fu Panda last night at the new cinema. Pretty good for a week night. Seat factor was about 55%..."

Breakeven Seat Factor is the seat factor required for the operator to well, break even.

Except with oil prices at levels they are today, BESFs have this annoying habit of being about 110%...