Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Fewer Passengers, More-Crowded Airplanes

Here are the key passenger-misery metrics from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics report on airline traffic in 2012 released today: Number of domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines, up 0.8 percent. Number of flights down 2.0 percent. Available seats down 0.2 percent. Load factor (the percentage of seats filled with paying passengers) up 1.7 percentage points, to a record 81.5 percent.
 
Overall, U.S. airlines carried 736.6 million passengers in 2012 (measured by enplanements, or the number of passengers boarding individual flights, including connecting flights) -- up from 730.8 in 2011.
 
 

Table 1: Scheduled System (Domestic and International) Airline Travel on U.S. Airlines 

Monthly
Year-to-Date
Dec 2011
Dec 2012
Change %
2011
2012
Change %
Passengers (in millions)
59.1
58.9
-0.3
730.8
736.6
0.8
Flights (in thousands)
770.8
740.2
-4.0
9,478.2
9,283.9
-2.0
Revenue Passenger Miles (in billions)
65.5
65.9
0.6
814.4
823.2
1.1
Available Seat-Miles (in billions)
81.1
80.9
-0.3
992.7
994.5
0.2
Load Factor*
80.8
81.5
0.7
82.0
82.8
0.8
Flight Stage Length**
750.0
768.5
2.5
742.9
755.2
1.7
Passenger Trip Length***
1,108.9
1,119.7
1.0
1,114.3
1,117.5
0.3
Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, T-100 Market and Segment 
*Change in load factor points

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