Global airline passenger carryings rose by 7% last year over 2015, representing an additional 242 million air trips.
A total of 3.8 billion passengers were flown on scheduled services in 2016 with Ryanair in the top five, new industry performance figures reveal.
Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region carried the largest number of passengers with a 35% market share, according to the new Iata world air transport statistics report. Carryings in the region rose by 11.3% to 1.3 billion.
Europe achieved a 26% market share with 992.4 million passengers, up 6.1% over 2015.
North America was next with a market share of 24% with 911.5 million passengers, up 3% year-on-year.
Latin America had a 7% market share with 275.1 million passengers, up 1.8% from 2015.
The Middle East achieved a 5% market share at 206.1 million, passengers, an increase of 9.1%.
Africa’s 2% market share with 84 million passengers was up by 6%.
The top five airlines ranked by total scheduled passengers carried were:
• Southwest Airlines (151.8 million)
• American Airlines (144.2 million)
• Delta Air Lines (143.3 million)
• China Southern Airlines (114.5 million)
• Ryanair (112 million)
New model airlines, a classification that includes low cost carriers, 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 carriers contributed 2.2%.
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:
• Hong Kong-Taipei (5.2 million, up 2.1% from 2015)
• Jakarta-Singapore (3.4 million, up 0.9% from 2015))
• Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong (3 million, a decrease of 3.14% from 2015)
• Kuala Lumpur–Singapore (2.8 million, up 3.3% from 2015)
• 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:
• Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (11.6 million, up 4.6% over 2015)
• Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.7 million, down 1.2% from 2015)
• Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.3 million, a decrease of 4% from 2015)
• Melbourne-Tullamarine-Sydney (7.3 million, down 4.6% from 2015)
• Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City (6.4 million, up 16.2% from 2015)
US Citizens continue to be the world’s most prevalent travellers. Some 810 million flew 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 the UK (7.8%), Germany (6.5%), China (6.4%) and France (4.1%).
Domestically, people in the US were also the top travellers at 29.9%, followed by China (19%), India (5.2%), Indonesia (4.4%) and Japan (3.5%).