This data-file tabulates statistics on the US aviation sector, from the Bureau of Transport Statistics, to compute the fuel economy of US air travel, per plane-mile and per passenger-mile.
In 2019, 10M US flights carried 930M passengers 1.1 trn passenger-miles. The latest data in the file run to February-2020. The latest date in the file run through the end of 2020, and show flights down 40%, passengers per flight down 40% and total passenger miles down -65% for 2020.
Fuel economy per passenger mile has risen at a 2.8% CAGR since 2003. Flight numbers have fallen by -0.4% pa and flights have become 0.8% longer. But load factors have improved by 0.7pp each year, spreading 0.5 plane miles per gallon across more passengers. Low load factors worsened fuel economy by c40% in 2020.