Continental Air Sept Traffic Up 11.8% On Overseas Travel Friday October 1, 8:31 PM EDT HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Continental Airlines Inc.'s (CAL <http://money.excite.com/jsp/qt/full.jsp?time=0&symbol_search_text=CAL> ) September traffic increased 11.8% as strong rises in overseas traffic continued to offset slower domestic growth. In addition, the company said the recent hurricanes had a minimal effect on its hub operations and estimated that the storms had cost the carrier about $6 million in revenue. Continental had $241.8 million in revenue last year. The carrier said in a press release Friday that its September traffic rose to 5.64 billion revenue passenger miles from 5.04 billion a year earlier. A revenue passenger mile is one paying passenger flown one mile. Continental's international traffic jumped 18% to 2.24 billion revenue passenger miles, while transatlantic traffic increased 26.5% to 1.25 billion revenue passenger miles. <http://ae.excite.com/adclick/CID=000132a57d9372bc00000000/acc_random=70 86130265/site=excite/area=money.news/aamsz=336x280> Domestic traffic grew 5.6% in September to 2.82 billion revenue passenger miles from 2.67 billion a year earlier. Continental's consolidated September load factor, or percentage of seats filled, increased to 74.5% from 71.7% in the same period last year. For the nine months of the year to date, Continental's traffic increased 13.2% to 54.91 billion revenue passenger miles from 48.52 billion a year earlier. Load factor rose to 76.8% from 74.8% in the year-to-date period. -Judy Lam; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5400; AskNewswires@xxxxxxxxxxxx