July 2005 Airline Traffic: Seven-Month Domestic Traffic Up 5.6 Percent From 2004

Friday, October 14, 2005 - U.S. airlines carried 5.6 percent more domestic passengers and flew 2.0 percent more domestic flights during the first seven months of 2005 than they did during the same period in 2004, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today reported, in a release of preliminary data (Table 1).

BTS, a part of DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), reported that the airlines carried 389.7 million domestic passengers during the first seven months of 2005, up from the 369.0 million carried between January and July 2004 (Table 2).

The passengers were carried on 5.92 million flights, up 2.0 percent from the 5.81 million flights operated in 2004 (Table 1).

In other domestic comparisons from the first seven months of 2004 to the first seven months of 2005:

Revenue passenger miles, a measure of the number of passengers and the distance flown, were up 5.6 percent.

Available seat-miles, a measure of airline capacity, were up 2.0 percent.

Passenger load factor, passengers carried as a proportion of available seats, was up 2.7 load factor points.

Flight stage length, the average non-stop distance flown per departure, was up 1.1 percent.

Passenger trip length, the average distance flown per passenger, was at 868 miles per trip, no change from the first seven months of 2004.

Among airlines, Southwest Airlines carried 51.1 million domestic passengers during the first seven months of 2005, the most of any airline (Table 3).

Among airports, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was the busiest U.S. airport for domestic travel during the first seven months of 2005, with 22.9 million passenger boardings (Table 4).