IATA World Air Transport Statistics reveals industry's 2016 performance

Photo by louis magnotti on Unsplash

Highlights of the 2016 airline industry performance:

Passenger

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:

1. Asia-Pacific 35% market share (1.3 billion, an increase of 11.3% compared to 2015)
2. Europe 26% market share (992.4 million, up 6.1% over 2015)
3. North America 24% market share (911.5 million, up 3% over 2015)
4. Latin America 7% market share (275.1 million, up 1.8% from 2015)
5. Middle East 5% market share (206.1 million, an increase of 9.1% over 2015)
6. Africa 2% market share (84 million, up 6% over 2015). 

The top five airlines ranked by total scheduled passengers carried (domestic and international) were:

1. Southwest Airlines (151.8 million)
2. American Airlines (144.2 million)
3. Delta Air Lines (143.3 million)
4. China Southern Airlines (114.5 million)
5. Ryanair (112 million)

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:

1. Hong Kong-Taipei (5.2 million, up 2.1% from 2015)
2. Jakarta-Singapore (3.4 million, up 0.9% from 2015))
3. Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong (3 million, a decrease of 3.14% from 2015)
4. Kuala Lumpur–Singapore (2.8 million, up 3.3% from 2015)
5. Hong Kong-Seoul (2.8 million, down 15% from 2015)

The top five domestic passenger airport-pairs were also all in the Asia-Pacific region:

1. Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (11.6 million, up 4.6% over 2015)
2. Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.7 million, down 1.2% from 2015)
3. Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.3 million, a decrease of 4% from 2015)
4. Melbourne-Tullamarine-Sydney (7.3 million, down 4.6% from 2015)
5. Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City (6.4 million, up 16.2% from 2015)

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:

• US Citizens are the world’s most prevalent travellers. Some 810 million passengers travelled on US passports in 2016 comprising 21% of all passengers worldwide.
• Internationally, American citizens also took top place, comprising 9.5% of all travellers. This was followed by citizens of the UK (7.8%), Germany (6.5%), China (6.4%) and France (4.1%).
• Domestically, US citizens were also the most prevalent travellers at 29.9%, followed by China (19.0%), India (5.2%), Indonesia (4.4%) and Japan (3.5%).

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.

Cargo

The top five airlines ranked by total freight tonnes carried on scheduled services were:

1. FedEx Express (7.1 million)
2. United Parcel Service (4.7 million)
3. Emirates Airline (2.5 million)
4. Qatar Airways (1.8 million)
5. Cathay Pacific Airways (1.6 million)

Airline alliances

• Star Alliance maintained its position as the largest airline alliance in 2016 with 38% of total scheduled traffic (in RPK), followed by SkyTeam (33%) and oneworld (29%).

The 2017 WATS and WATS+ are available for purchase on IATA’s website