Domestic Flights with Tarmac Times of More than 3 Hours and International Flights with Tarmac Times of More than 4 Hours, December 2018

December 2018 Regularly Scheduled Flights with More than 50% Delayed Arrivals of More than 30 Minutes

December 2018 U.S. Passenger Airline Employment Data

The 21 U.S. scheduled passenger airlines employed 2.3 percent more workers in December 2018 than in December 2017:

• December’s 440,396 full-time equivalents (FTEs) was the highest December employment total since December 2002 (462,602 FTEs).
• December was the 62nd consecutive month that U.S. scheduled passenger airline FTEs exceeded the same month of the previous year.

Airline Employment December tables 2018

Scheduled Passenger Airline Full-Time Equivalent Employees, Month of December, 1990-2018

Third-Quarter 2018 Air Fare Data

The third quarter 2018 average domestic itinerary air fare of $343 is the lowest inflation-adjusted quarterly fare since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics began collecting such records in 1995, down 0.4 percent from the previous low of $345 in the third quarter of 2017.

3Q Air Fare Tables

Figure 2. Fares by Airport Group based on Number of Originating Domestic Passengers 3Q 2018

Figure 1. U.S. Average Domestic Fares, 3rd Quarter 1995-2018

Estimated January 2019 U.S. Airline Traffic Data

U.S. airlines’ carried an estimated 75.2 million systemwide (domestic and international) scheduled service passengers, seasonally-adjusted, in January 2019, up 0.1 percent from the December estimate, according to a Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ (BTS) first estimate.