BTS Releases October 2010 Airline Traffic Data;
System Traffic Up 5.6 Percent from October 2009
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) yesterday reported in a release of preliminary data that U.S. airlines carried 62.1 million scheduled domestic and international passengers in October 2010. This is a 5.6 percent increase from October 2009. The October 2010 passenger total was also 4.0 percent above that of two years ago in October 2008 but still remained 3.3 percent below the pre-recession level of October 2007.
BTS, a part of DOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, also reported that U.S. airlines carried 4.9 percent more domestic passengers in October 2010 than in October 2009. The number of international passengers on U.S. carriers in October 2010 increased 11.8 percent over October 2009. The October 2010 load factors of 83.1 percent systemwide, 83.4 percent domestic and 82.3 percent international were the highest recorded for any October.
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 10 months of 2010, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines increased 2.0 percent from the same period in 2009 to 603.6 million. The number of passengers declined 4.5 percent from the first 10 months of 2008 to the first 10 months of 2010.
U.S. airlines carried 1.4 percent more domestic passengers and 5.9 percent more international passengers in the first 10 months of 2010 than during the same period in 2009.
See BTS Air Traffic Release for summary tables and additional data.
