BTS Releases November 2010 Airline Traffic Data;
System Traffic Up 6.1 Percent from November 2009
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported in a release of preliminary data that U.S. airlines carried 58.1 million scheduled domestic and international passengers in November 2010. The 6.1 percent increase from November 2009 is the largest year-to-year rise since August 2007. The November 2010 passenger total was also 7.4 percent above that of two years ago in November 2008 but still remained 6.1 percent below the pre-recession level of November 2007.
BTS, a part of DOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, also reported that U.S. airlines carried 5.8 percent more domestic passengers in November 2010 than in November 2009. The number of international passengers on U.S. carriers in November 2010 increased 7.8 percent over November 2009. The November 2010 load factors of 80.4 percent systemwide, 81.1 percent domestic and 78.4 percent international were the highest recorded for any November.
Additional traffic numbers can be found on the BTS website in the Airline Industry box. Click on a link in the column on the right. For more historic numbers, see Traffic on the BTS website.
For the first 11 months of 2010, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines increased 2.3 percent from the same period in 2009 to 661.8 million. The number of passengers declined 3.5 percent from the first 11 months of 2008 to the first 11 months of 2010.
U.S. airlines carried 1.8 percent more domestic passengers and 6.0 percent more international passengers in the first 11 months of 2010 than during the same period in 2009.
See BTS Air Traffic Release for summary tables and additional data.
