23 Load factor – passengers
23.1 EUROCONTROL recommended values
The load factor represents the percentage of seats filled by fare paying passengers on a flight. Figure 23.1 shows the estimated passenger load factor according to EUROCONTROL STATFOR values. These values were obtained by dividing the total number of passengers by the total number of available seats on the flights. This information is based on the data produced by Eurostat and covers the EU27+UK, and four European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states.1
Figure 23.2 presents the evolution in the passenger load factor according to IATA data. These values represent the ratio of revenue passenger km to available seat km. The difference from values in Figure 23.1 is the geographical coverage: IATA’s Europe area is larger than EU Europe statistical area used by STATFOR, it also covers countries such as Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
23.2 References
European Free Trade Association: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland↩︎
The values used in this figure come from IATA monthly Air Passenger Market Analysis reports for the month of December of each year. The data is extracted from the table “Air passenger market detail”, looking at Total market in Europe, column PLF (level) for the calendar year.↩︎