Airlines across the world flew 3.8 billion in 2017: IATA

Airlines across the world flew 3.8 billion people last year, which is 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 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, the 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).
 
The top five international passenger airport-pairs were almost the same as they were in 2015 and all were within the Asia-Pacific region -- Hong Kong-Taipei, Jakarta-Singapore, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur–Singapore and Hong Kong-Seoul.