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Highlights of the 2016 airline industry performance:
Once again, airlines in the Asia-Pacific region carried the largest number of passengers. The regional ranking (based on total passengers carried on scheduled services by airlines registered in that region) is:
The top five airlines ranked by total scheduled passengers carried (domestic and international) were:
The top five international/regional passenger airport-pairs were almost the same as they were in 2015, and all were within the Asia-Pacific region:
The top five domestic passenger airport-pairs were also all in the Asia-Pacific region:
Passenger traffic by nationality
A new feature available this year in the WATS+ edition is the ranking of passenger numbers in terms of nationality (citizenship). Highlights include:
New model airlines
New Model Airlines¹ (NMAs), a classification that includes low-cost carriers (LCCs), accounted for 28.3% of all passengers in 2016, up from 27.1% of passengers in 2015. Network carriers account for 69.5% of total passengers while leisure carriers² contributed 2.2% to passenger volumes.
Measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), NMAs accounted for 20% of global traffic, reflecting the concentration of this sector on short-haul flying. By the same RPK measure, network carriers accounted for 77% of traffic with leisure carriers comprising 3% of traffic.
The top five airlines ranked by total freight tonnes carried on scheduled services were:
Airline alliances
The 2017 WATS and WATS+ are available for purchase on IATA’s website