Air travel returned to record territory in 2024. Scheduled commercial transport carried about 4.528 billion passengers worldwide, while airline passenger demand, measured in revenue passenger-kilometres (RPKs), rose 10.4% year over year. The figures below show how demand was distributed across regions and markets, and how travelers moved through the world’s busiest airports and routes.
Air travel statistics at a glance
- Global volume and safety
- Demand, capacity and regional shares
- International and domestic travel
- Largest national markets and aircraft
- European passenger transport
- Airports and airport-pair routes
Global volume and safety
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reported around 4.528 billion passengers carried by scheduled commercial air transport worldwide in 2024. Its Executive Summary, ICAO Safety Report 2025, also gives an alternative figure of around 4.17 billion scheduled commercial passengers for the same 2024 measurement period. These figures should be treated as reported measures from the source rather than combined or averaged; the reports use different statistical presentations. ICAO said worldwide scheduled commercial passenger traffic exceeded the approximately 4.5 billion passengers recorded in 2019, the pre-pandemic comparison year. (Executive Summary, ICAO Safety Report 2025)
Scheduled commercial operations recorded more than 37 million flight departures in 2024. Against that operating scale, ICAO counted 95 accidents in scheduled commercial air transport, including 10 fatal accidents. The year’s reported total was 296 fatalities and 134 serious injuries.
ICAO’s global accident rate was 2.56 accidents per million flight departures. Its global fatality rate was 65 fatalities per billion passengers. These are worldwide scheduled-commercial-air-transport indicators for 2024, not estimates of the risk associated with one particular airline, aircraft type, airport or itinerary. The safety figures also use the scope defined by ICAO’s report and should not be read as a count of every type of aviation operation.
Demand, capacity and regional shares
IATA measured worldwide airline passenger demand at 10.4% above the previous year in 2024. Capacity, measured in available seat-kilometres (ASKs), increased 8.7%. The worldwide passenger load factor—the share of available seat capacity used by passengers—was 83.5%. Demand therefore grew faster than capacity on this measure, while the global load factor remained above 80%. (Global Air Passenger Demand Reaches Record High in 2024)
The regional distribution of industry RPKs shows the scale of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America in global aviation demand.
| Region | Share of industry RPKs | RPK change year over year | Passenger load factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asia-Pacific | 33.5% | 16.9% | 83.4% |
| Europe | 26.7% | 8.7% | 84.8% |
| North America | 22.9% | 4.6% | Not reported here |
| Middle East | 9.4% | Not reported here | Not reported here |
| Latin America | 5.3% | Not reported here | Not reported here |
| Africa | 2.2% | Not reported here | 74.9% |
Asia-Pacific accounted for 33.5% of industry RPKs and had the fastest reported growth among the three largest regions in this dataset, at 16.9% year over year. Europe represented 26.7% of RPKs, with 8.7% growth and an 84.8% passenger load factor. North America represented 22.9% and grew 4.6%. The Middle East accounted for 9.4%, Latin America for 5.3%, and Africa for 2.2%. Africa’s reported passenger load factor was 74.9%.
The regional shares describe passenger demand by distance flown rather than a simple headcount of travelers. A long international journey contributes more RPKs than a short flight, so RPK shares are useful for comparing traffic volume but are not interchangeable with passenger totals.
International and domestic travel
International traffic had recovered to 0.5% above its previous 2019 high by the end of 2024. International capacity was still 0.9% below its 2019 level, while the international passenger load factor reached a record 83.2%, according to IATA. This combination describes a market carrying slightly more international traffic than at the earlier peak with marginally less available capacity.
Asia-Pacific airlines posted the strongest reported international-traffic increase among the listed regions, up 26.0% year over year. Latin American airlines increased international traffic 14.4%, and African airlines increased it 13.2%. European carriers rose 9.7%; Middle Eastern airlines rose 9.4%; and North American carriers rose 6.8%. These percentages compare each region’s 2024 international traffic with its own 2023 level.
Domestic passenger markets represented 38.2% of total industry RPKs in 2024. Worldwide domestic RPKs increased 5.7% year over year, and the worldwide domestic passenger load factor was 84.0%. The international and domestic load-factor figures are reported separately by IATA, so they should be used as market-level indicators rather than combined into a new average.
Largest national markets and aircraft
IATA’s 2024 World Air Transport Statistics report measured arriving or departing passenger totals for several major national markets. The United States recorded 876 million arriving or departing passengers, up 5.2% year over year. China recorded 741 million, up 18.7%. The United Kingdom recorded 261 million, up 7.3%, while Spain recorded 241 million, up 10.7%.
India recorded 211 million arriving or departing passengers, an 11.1% year-over-year increase. Japan recorded 205 million, up 18.6%. These are national market totals on the report’s arriving-or-departing basis; they are not a count of unique people, since a traveler can be represented in more than one movement.
Aircraft-family activity also highlights the concentration of commercial flying around widely used narrow-body types. Boeing 737 aircraft of all variants flew 10 million flights in 2024. Airbus A320 aircraft flew 7.9 million flights, and Airbus A321 aircraft flew 3.4 million flights. The figures cover flights by the named aircraft families and are not passenger totals. (IATA Launches 2024 World Air Transport Statistics Report)
European passenger transport
Eurostat reported about 1.1 billion air passengers in the European Union in 2024, an 8.3% increase from 2023. The comparable 2019 figure was about 1.0 billion passengers, before the pandemic. EU air passenger growth was highest in February, when the year-over-year increase reached 13.0%. (Air passenger transport statistics)
The EU’s 2024 passenger mix was weighted toward travel beyond the EU. Extra-EU transport represented 49.3% of EU air passenger transport. Intra-EU transport represented 36.4%, and domestic transport represented 14.3%.
Spain carried 123.8 million passengers in intra-EU transport, the highest national total for that category. Germany carried 87.1 million passengers in extra-EU transport, the highest national total for that category. These categories describe the geographic relationship of the flight to the EU, so they should not be interpreted as a ranking of all national airport traffic.
EU air transport with Eastern Asia increased 43.0% year over year in 2024. The result points to especially rapid growth on that regional connection, but it does not mean that every Eastern Asian route or every EU country experienced the same increase.
Airports and airport-pair routes
Paris Charles de Gaulle handled 70.3 million air passengers in 2024, the largest EU airport total reported by Eurostat. Amsterdam Schiphol handled 66.8 million, and Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas handled 66.1 million. The totals measure airport passenger activity, not unique individuals; connecting passengers and repeated journeys can contribute to airport counts.
At the route level, Jeju-Seoul was the world’s busiest airport pair, with 13.2 million passengers in 2024. New York JFK–Los Angeles was North America’s busiest airport pair, with 2.2 million passengers. Barcelona–Palma de Mallorca was Europe’s busiest airport pair, with 2.0 million passengers.
These airport-pair statistics describe the traffic recorded between the named airports, while airport totals describe activity at one airport across all its routes. They therefore answer different questions: the pair figures identify concentrated city-to-city or airport-to-airport flows, whereas the airport figures show the overall scale of a hub or gateway. (IATA Launches 2024 World Air Transport Statistics Report)