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AIRCRAFT CAPACITY UTILIZATION - PASSENGERS AND FREIGHT

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

AIRCRAFT CAPACITY UTILIZATION - PASSENGERS AND FREIGHT

Domestic Aircraft Revenue Load Factors (monthly data, not seasonally adjusted)

Domestic Aircraft Revenue Load Factors (monthly data, not seasonally adjusted)

Aircraft load factors are used to measure aircraft in-flight capacity utilization.

Revenue Load Factors (percent)    Jun-00       Jun-01   
Passenger revenue load factor 78.33 74.97
Passenger revenue load factor change from same month previous year  4.35 -3.37
Overall aircraft revenue load factor 62.23 58.91
Overall aircraft revenue change from same month previous year  2.15 -3.31
Freight revenue load factor 34.55 31.68
Freight revenue load factor change from same month previous year -0.49 -2.87

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, June 2001.