The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has released the latest edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) report, which focuses on statistical data for 2024.
The WATS report, which is updated each year with data from more than 240 airlines from across the globe, provides an overview of airline metrics related to demand, supply and performance, as well as a detailed breakdown of all scheduled passenger and cargo traffic demand, scheduled passenger capacity and cargo capacity, overview of the global airline fleet and top airport pairs.
The report also provides additional, in-depth details on the industry’s financial health with information on overall operating costs and revenue, aircraft use and number of airline employees.
This year’s report has found that international, premium class travel (business and first class) grew by 11.8%, outpacking the growth in global economy travel of 11.5% with a total number of 116.9 million international premium-class travellers throughout 2024 (6% overall).
Asia Pacific in particular saw a year-on-year growth of 22.7% (21 million premium passengers), though it was outperformed by economy class passengers, which rose to 28.6% (500.8 million passengers). Its growth in premium travel exceeded economy class travel across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America, with Europe remaining the largest market for international premium travel overall, with 39.3 million premium passengers.
The highest percentage of premium travellers as a percentage of all travellers was highest in the Middle East at 14.7%.
Of the world’s busiest airport pairs, Asia Pacific took the top spot with Jeju-Seoul (CJU-GMP) performing as the most popular route globally at 13.2 million passengers flying between the two airports across 2024. Of the top 10, one airport pair (Jeddah-Riyadh (JED-RUH) was not situated in the Asia Pacific region.
The busiest route in Latin America was Bogota-Medellin (BOG-MDE) with 3.8 million passengers whilst Cape Town-Johannesburg (CPT-JNB) formed Africa’s busiest route with 3.3 million passengers. North America’s busiest route was New York John F. Kennedy International Airport-Los Angeles (JFK-LAX) with 2.2 million passengers, whilst Barcelona-Palma de Mallorca (BCN-PMI) was the busiest within Europe with 2 million passengers travelling the corridor.
Of all aircraft used in 2024, narrowbody aircraft from both Boeing and Airbus were amongst the most popular, with Boeing 737 aircraft (all variants) flying 10 million flights with 2.4 trillion Available Seat Kilometers (ASKs) in 2024, followed by the Airbus A320 with 7.9 million flights and 1.7 trillion ASKs and the Airbus A321 with 3.4 million flights and 1.1 trillion ASKs.
Of all countries, the US remains the largest aviation market internationally with 876 million passengers across 2024 on the strength of its domestic market with a 5.2% growth year-on-year. In second place China had 741 million passengers, seeing grwoth of 18.7% compared to 2023.
The full report can be read on the IATA website, here.
