The International Air Transport Association, an airline industry trade association with 290 member airlines, has released its 62nd annual report on travel statistics for 2017. Asia-Pacific: 1.5 billion passengers, 36.3% market share, +10.6% Europe: 1.1 billion passengers, 26.3% market share, +8.2% North America: 941.8 million passengers, 23% market share, +3.2% Latin America: 286.1 million passengers, 7% market share, +4.1% Middle East: 216.1 million passengers, 5.3% market share, +4.6% Africa: 88.5 million passengers, 2.2% market share, +6.6% over 2016Unsurprisingly, both the five busiest international airline routes and top five domestic routes between airport pairs were also all in the Asia-Pacific region. Americans were also the most frequent fliers by nationality and represented nearly a fifth of the total air traffic in 2017. India also overtook the U.K. as the third-largest source of passenger traffic much sooner than IATA’s earlier projection of 2025. Most stark is that air traffic is increasing much faster than anyone expected, with tremendous growth in emerging Asian markets.

Source: Forbes September 08, 2018 17:48 UTC