Airlines flew 3.8 b people in '17: IATA

Airlines across the world flew 3.8 billion people last year, translating to an increase of 7% from 2015, the latest IATA World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) said on Monday.

The WATS, the yearbook of the airline industry’s performance, showed that India was ranked third in the category of carrying the most number of domestic passengers.

The report showed that the US citizens were the world’s most prevalent travelers with around 810 million passengers travelling on American passports in 2016, comprising 21% of all passengers worldwide.

Internationally, American citizens also took top place, comprising 9.5% of all travelers. This was followed by citizens of the UK (7.8%), Germany (6.5%), China (6.4%) and France (4.1%).

When it comes to domestic air travel too, US citizens were the most prevalent travelers at 29.9%, while Indians were ranked third (5.2%). China was second at (19%), while Indonesia (4.4%), was at fourth and Japan (3.5%) at fifth.

According to the report, airlines in the Asia-Pacific region once again carried the largest number of passengers.

The Asia-Pacific cornered 35% market share which is 1.3 billion, an increase of 11.3% compared to 2015.

Europe has 26% market share (992.4 million, up 6.1% over 2015) followed by North America 24% market share (911.5 million, up 3% over 2015). The Middle East has a market share of 5% (206.1 million, an increase of 9.1% over 2015).