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| U.S. Navy photo by Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Spike Call |
U.S. airlines carried 58.1 million scheduled domestic and international passengers in November 2010, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).
That’s a 6.1 percent increase from November 2009; it is the largest year-to-year rise since August 2007, according to the DOT. The November 2010 passenger total was also 7.4 percent above that of two years ago in November 2008 but still remained 6.1 percent below the pre-recession level of November 2007.
BTS also reported that U.S. airlines carried 5.8 percent more domestic passengers in November 2010 than in November 2009. The number of international passengers on U.S. carriers in November 2010 increased 7.8 percent over November 2009. The November 2010 load factors of 80.4 percent systemwide, 81.1 percent domestic and 78.4 percent international were the highest recorded for any November.
For the first 11 months of 2010, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines increased 2.3 percent from the same period in 2009 to 661.8 million. The number of passengers declined 3.5 percent from the first 11 months of 2008 to the first 11 months of 2010.
U.S. airlines carried 1.8 percent more domestic passengers and 6.0 percent more international passengers in the first 11 months of 2010 than during the same period in 2009.
CAPTION: An American Airlines aircraft arrives at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The flight, from Miami, was the first commercial airline flight since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake caused severe damage in and around Port-au-Prince Jan. 12, 2010.