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AN OVERVIEW OF THE U.S.
COMMERCIAL AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Since its modest beginnings in the 1920s, the
U.S. commercial airline industry has developed
into a robust airline system noted for speedy,
reliable, and safe movement of people and
goods. The extent and density of its network, the
level of passenger traffic, as measured by revenue
passenger-miles (RPMs) 1 generated, are at
historic highs (see figure A-1).
The U.S. commercial airline industry has
grown dramatically since the end of World War II,
with impressive gains occurring in the post-1979
era. For example, in 1945, U.S. trunk carriers 2
1 A revenue passenger is defined as one who has paid a fare, as distinct from a
carrier employee who travels free. A revenue passenger-mile is defined as one
passenger transported one mile.
2 Trunk carriers provided service to major city markets. After passage of the
Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the formal definitions of carriers changed.
Carriers that earn more than $1 billion annually are now referred to as majors.
See 14 CFR 121.
RPMs (billion)
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
500
A P P E N D I X A
flew 3.3 billion domestic RPMs; in 1979, 205
billion. By 1994, domestic RPMs for the majors
had climbed to almost 352 billion. Moreover, the
United States has more airports (18,343 in 1994)
than the rest of the world combined. Of this number,
over 400 are primary airports (with Federal
Aviation Administration control towers), which
account for more than 99 percent of all passenger
enplanements on air carriers. (USDOT FAA
1995) In 1994, 515 million passengers boarded
U.S. airlines, 42 percent of the 1.2 billion airline
passengers in the world. In the same year, U.S.
airlines produced 511 billion RPMs or 39 percent
of the world’s 1.3 trillion RPMs.
Between 1979 and 1994, growth of air passenger
travel (domestic and international) in the
United States kept pace with that of the world
FIGURE A1: DOMESTIC REVENUE PASSENGER-MILES OF MAJOR AIRLINES, 1926–94
0
1926 1930 1934 1938 1942 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994
KEY: RPMs = revenue passenger-miles.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Office of Airline Information data.
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