The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported in a release of preliminary data that U.S. airlines carried 62.4 million scheduled domestic and international passengers in March 2010. This is a 2.4 percent increase from March 2009. The March 2010 passenger total was 7.8 percent below that of two years ago in March 2008.
BTS, a part of DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration, also reported that U.S. airlines carried 2.0 percent more domestic passengers in March 2010 than in March 2009. The number of international passengers on U.S. carriers increased 5.1 percent over March 2009. The March 2010 load factors of 82.6 percent systemwide and 83.4 percent domestic were the highest recorded for any March.
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 three months of 2010, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers carried by U.S. airlines was 164.1 million, an increase of 0.9 percent from the same period in 2009. The number of passengers declined 10.1 percent from the first three months of 2008 to the first three months of 2009.
U.S. airlines carried 0.6 percent more domestic passengers and 2.8 percent more international passengers in the first three months of 2010 than during the same period in 2009.