BTS Statistics Release: 2016 Annual and December U.S. Airline Traffic Data

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported that U.S. airlines carried an all-time high number of passengers in 2016 – 823.0 million systemwide, 719.0 million domestic and 103.9 million international – surpassing the previous highs reached in 2015. The airlines also set all-time annual highs for systemwide, domestic and international revenue passenger miles (RPMs) and available seat-miles (ASMs). Although passenger trips handled by airlines reached an all-time high in 2016 there were more empty seats available because airlines expanded capacity at an even greater rate. Load factor – the measure of the use of airline capacity