US registered civil airlines broke several new records in 2016 for the number of passengers carried, the distance they carried them and for the extra capacity used by airlines – according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) this month.

 

For the first year ever, US airlines carried more than 800m scheduled passengers (reaching 823m worldwide) a 3.1% rise on the 798m they carried in 2015.

 

Using the measure of revenue passenger-miles (RPMs), which includes both the number of passengers and the distance they travel, US airline operations grew even more with 933bn RPMs – a rise of 3.5% on 2015.

 

OVERALL LOAD FACTOR REMAINS HIGH

In addition, US airline scheduled service available seat-miles (ASMs) exceeded 1.1 trillion in 2016, a record thanks to a 3.9% increase on 2015.

 

The airline load factor declined to 83.4 from an all-time annual record of 83.8 in 2015, although it remains high compared to earlier years. A decade ago, the load factor was 79.2 and 10 years before that stood at 69.3 in 1996.

 

The BTS added that airlines carried 719m domestic passengers last year, a 3.3% increase from 2015 and the first time they have topped 700m. By contrast and internationally, US airlines carried 104m passengers, up 1.7% on 2015.

 

Revenue passenger-miles (RPMs) also grew faster on the domestic side, rising 4.7% to 660bn compared to international growth of 0.7% to 273bn. Meanwhile, international traffic generated 29% of US airline RPMs in 2016, even though fewer than 13% of their passengers travelled internationally.