The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) has released its Full Year 2022 U.S. Airline Traffic Data report. According to the DOT, American carriers carried 935 million passengers last year.
2022 passenger traffic
2022 proved to be another strong year of recovery for air traffic worldwide, especially in the US. The COVID-19 pandemic virtually destroyed air travel, leading to empty airports, aircraft grounding, layoffs, and empty flights. Air travel dropped 63% in the US from 2019 to 2020. Data shows the decline began in January 2020, with about 80 million passengers flying that month, nine million less than in December 2019. Over the next few months, the numbers continued declining:
- December 2019 - 89,597,073
- January 2020 - 80,594,291
- February 2020 - 75,708,828
- March 2020 - 43,377,500
- April 2020 - 3,281,041
Since April 2020, airlines have struggled to recover passenger numbers to pre-pandemic levels, but demand has returned faster than anyone predicted. From 2020 to 2021, passenger numbers almost doubled, and 2022 numbers reached 88.83% of what they were in 2019.
Historically, summer in the US is when air traffic reaches its peak. Below is a month-by-month comparison of passenger traffic in the summer of 2019 versus 2022:
|
Month |
2019 |
2022 |
|---|---|---|
|
May |
92,359,258 |
82,893,634 |
|
June |
95,537,871 |
85,558,294 |
|
July |
99,189,775 |
89,461,404 |
|
August |
95,968,379 |
85,345,500 |
Like passenger numbers, the number of flights has also significantly recovered but has not reached pre-pandemic capacity. In 2019, 10,220,305 arrived and departed from the US. Last year that number reached just 8,689,032, 85% of 2019 numbers but a significant increase from 2020's 5,747,387 flights. Below is a comparison of flight numbers between 2019 and 2022:
|
Month |
2019 |
2022 |
|---|---|---|
|
May |
880,399 |
754,819 |
|
June |
886,164 |
756,807 |
|
July |
919,931 |
789,918 |
|
August |
917,557 |
777,130 |
Breaking the data down even further shows that international traffic has recovered slower than domestic. In 2022, international passenger traffic reached just 76.72% of 2019 levels, with 185,227,759 travelers on international flights. Domestic travel recovered 92.45% of pre-pandemic levels last year, with 750,216,762 flying on domestic flights.
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American carriers recovered 92% of their pre-pandemic levels in total, 88.9% of international traffic, and 92.45% of domestic traffic. Foreign carriers have been slower to recover passenger traffic to and from the US, with 2022 levels reaching just 65.62%. Currently, data per airline is unavailable in the DOT system through the end of the year.
Summer 2023 for the big three
According to Cirium data, the big three American carriers' summer schedules for 2023 are under 2019 levels by flight numbers. Though flight numbers are down, seat numbers are up. Between the three, this summer has 12.1% fewer flights scheduled than four years ago. Delta has the smallest gap between this year's and 2019's schedules by flights at just 10.1% less. Next is United, with 12.9% fewer flights, then American Airlines, with 13%.
For all three carriers, seat numbers are up this year. Between the three, 243,445,531 seats are on sale between May 1st and August 31st, an increase of 5,164,473 over 2019. United Airlines has the highest growth of the three, at 5.3%. Delta and American have 1.4% and 0.5%, respectively.