AIRCRAFT CAPACITY UTILIZATION – DOMESTIC PASSENGERS AND FREIGHT
Domestic Aircraft Revenue Load Factors (monthly data, not seasonally
adjusted)
Aircraft load factors are used to measure aircraft in-flight capacity
utilization.
Domestic Revenue Load Factors (percent)
Aug-00
Aug-01
Passenger revenue load factor
75.55
75.78
Passenger revenue load factor change from same month previous year
2.10
0.23
Overall aircraft revenue load factor
60.22
58.86
Overall aircraft revenue change from same month previous year
0.96
-1.36
Freight revenue load factor
34.22
30.80
Freight revenue load factor change from same month previous year
0.07
-3.43
NOTES: The current value is compared to the value from the same period
in the previous year to account for seasonality.
Load factor relates to the potential capacity of a system relative to
its actual performance. In order to combine passenger and freight to calculate
overall aircraft load factors, a common metric is needed: ton-miles. Thus,
it is assumed that a passenger plus baggage weighs 200 pounds. The data
do not include international flights by U.S. domestic carriers or domestic
flights by foreign carriers.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics,
Air Carrier Traffic Statistics Monthly, August 2001.
