Busier Skies: Increase in Air Travel since 2009

Have you encouraged job candidates to board a plane and go to a job interview?  Is your line of business dependent on air travel?  Even if you don’t get to fly in the business class, it may well be that you find your work intertwined with traversing great distances quickly.

Although every recruiter is familiar with the trials of the job market in today’s economy, one could do worse than to look at the air traffic to determine how the economy is changing. The general uptick in travel may spell very positive signs for the economy. Along with an increase in recent monthly job growth, this is a welcome trend.

In 2010, 786.7 million scheduled passengers traveled on U.S. airlines and on foreign airlines serving the United States.   These numbers show that more people were traveling than in the previous year.  In fact, it shows a 2.1 percent increase in ridership since 2009.

This is still considerable down from the 812.3 million air passengers in 2008.

Although the 2010 increase is reflected in the number of domestic travelers, the increase in international passengers is particularly noteworthy.  U.S. airlines carried 2.4 percent more total system passengers in 2010 than in 2009. U.S. airlines carried 1.9 percent more domestic passengers in 2010 and 5.9 percent more international passengers than in 2009.

Delta Air Lines, following its merger with Northwest Airlines, carried more total system passengers in 2010  than any other U.S. airline for the first time since 2001.  Delta carried more international passengers to and from the United States in 2010 than any other U.S. or foreign carrier after American had carried the most for 20 consecutive years.

In general, the most passengers boarded planes in 2010 at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International than at any other U.S. airport.  More international passengers boarded planes at New York John F. Kennedy than at any other U.S. airport.

How many flights do all these passengers require?  U.S. carriers and foreign carriers serving the United States operated 10.0 million domestic and international flights in 2010. That’s a lot of free peanuts.