Passenger Load Factor

[Gsel]

Does anyone know if there is a website that gives the average passenger load factor for flights (international or domestic)? Thanks

[kenish]

Interesting question, that I can't answer. US domestic airlines must report overall load factors to DoT as well as number of involuntary "bumps". I've never seen it broken out by individual flight. I would think airlines don't divulge that for competitive reasons. Reservation tools like ITN will show pretty accurately how full a flight is but that's a specific date in the future, not after the fact. It's possible the BTS (Bureau of Transportation Statistics) database may have the info.

[Gsel]

Thanks, but I tried that! It would seem that the info should be "somewhere", but if it is I sure can't find it. Thought the greater minds on the board might have the answer.

[6rugrats]

I don't know of any such webpage. Think how long and complicated it would be if you are asking about every possible flight. Not sure the airlines want you to know specific information anyway. You can find averages for monthly loads, but I've never seen ones for individual flights, if that's what you are asking.

 

Just curious, why are you interested in this?

[DougYWG]

Are you asking about load factor on future flights or after the event?

 

My experience has been that the airlines are now very good at using their yield management systems to put a bum on every seat so you can almost assume load factors of close to 100%. There are exceptions e.g. directional imbalance or late night positioning but overall, flights are full.

 

BTW you can't trust the seating charts on an airline's website to determine booked loads.

[parody]

Does anyone know if there is a website that gives the average passenger load factor for flights (international or domestic)? Thanks

 

I am not aware of a website that will provide load factors for a specific flight, if that is what you are looking for. Load factor information is available from BTS by airline over a month or 12 month period. An example of the latter can be found at http://www.transtats.bts.gov/carriers.asp. This particular example shows that AirTran had a 79.7% load factor for the 12 month period ending May 2009.

[steve20832]

Domestic flights are 185 pounds in the summer and 190 pounds in the winter per person. Add fuel, luggage and cargo and that will give you the total weight.

[YXU AC*SE]

Does anyone know if there is a website that gives the average passenger load factor for flights (international or domestic)? Thanks

 

Route / carrier load factors are proprietary and won't be published. In fact there was a very interesting corporate espionage case between Air Canada and WestJet, where a former AC employee working for WS accessed a AC corp travel webtool tens of thousands of times and manually calculated load factors. The case was settled for 15.5$M (here's a recap: http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/1043731771.html?dids=1043731771:1043731771&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=May+30%2C+2006&author=Rick+Westhead&pub=Toronto+Star&desc=WestJet+admits+spying+on+rival%3B+Air+Canada+files+stolen+in+'Project+007'+Agrees+to+pay+%2415.5+million+in+penalties&pqatl=google)

 

At the consolidated level, IATA tracks on behalf of the industry. You may search their press archive here: http://www1.iata.org/search.htm?q=load+factor&sc=pressroom

 

As of 30th July 2009, North American carriers were aggregated at 82.6%. Individual carriers normally publish monthly and/or quarterly PLFs as part of their routine release of info to the street.

 

Scott.

[kenish]

steve20832- Sorry but you don't understand the term. Load factor is the percentage of seats filled with paying passengers.

[6rugrats]

steve20832- Sorry but you don't understand the term. Load factor is the percentage of seats filled with paying passengers.

 

You're kidding, right?

 

Of course steve20832 understands load factor. He was making a joke!

 

Some days it seems as if no one has a sense of humor anymore. I get it steve!!

[kenish]

Well excuse me for missing the sarcasm. And you should "know" me well enough by now from other posts to realize I have a sense of humor through my posts and use the smiley quite a bit. It sort of takes a dour, humorless person to make that judgement of others. :D

[6rugrats]

Well excuse me for missing the sarcasm. And you should "know" me well enough by now from other posts to realize I have a sense of humor through my posts and use the smiley quite a bit. It sort of takes a dour, humorless person to make that judgement of others. :D

 

Quite right - you can read my nature like a book.

 

There's no excuse on this board for ever missing sarcasm :)!!

[Gsel]

Thanks all for the replies. My questions was mainly out of curiosity, just wondering how things compare over the past few years since government regulation and all the changes in service.