.Irish airline Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary poses during a press conference June 27, 2017 in Rome.… [+] Ryanair reported a load factor of 94.7% in 2017. Photo credit FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
Summer is here. That means even more packed planes and sweltering airports. If you think that airline flights are much more crowded than they used to be, you're not wrong. The passenger load factor (PLF) of commercial airlines has risen significantly over the past decade. In 2005, airlines had an average load factor of 75.2%, so on average, just three out of every four seats were sold. The recession of 2007-2010 stopped load factor growth. But by 2018, the average airline load factor hit 81.7% worldwide.
In the US load factor has increased on domestic flights from 67.88% in 2002 to 86.08% in 2018, while the number of domestic flights has stayed almost constant, from 8,085,083 in 2002 to 8,176,610 in 2017. The US airline industry has clearly gotten better in filling seats as revenue passenger miles rose from 471,652,206 in 2002 to 684,221,393 in 2017.
The days of having a whole row to stretch out in coach, or even an empty middle seat separating you from your neighbor, increasingly seem like a distant memory. The airlines hardly weep over this, as they busily shrink seats and cram additional rows into smaller, more fuel-efficient jets. And the fuller those jets fly, the more profitable they are.
As one might expect, the low-cost carriers often have the highest load factors. But even there, load factor can plateau or even drop. Frontier Airlines, for example, grew its load factor from 73.5% in 2004 to an astounding 91.28% in 2013. Since then, however, load factor, though still robust, has dropped back to 86.36% in 2017. One reason may be increased competition, with major airlines now offering the dread ‘basic economy' fare, beginning with Delta's ‘experiment' in 2014.
So which airlines have the most packed planes? As of July 2017, the hands-down leader was Ireland's Ryanair. In 2016, Ryanair's load factor was 93.1% The airline actually increased that in 2017, to a tightly crammed 94.7%. The airline has something of a ‘cattle car' reputation, and its CEO, Michael O'Leary, has suggested such money-making (and publicity-grabbing) schemes as stand-up seating and charging to use the aircraft lavatory.
Nonetheless, Ryanair successfully packed in 130 million Millennials and other budget travelers in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. As Victoria Moores, European editor for Air Transport World, said of Ryanair, “If you look at their load factor, which is the percentage of the aircraft that is filled, they are filling 95% of every aircraft on average.”
But other carriers challenged Ryanair for the passenger packing prize. Four other carriers boasted 90% or better load factors in 2017, led by India's Spicejet, which flew an average of 92.8% full. It was closely followed by Europe's easyJet, 92.4%, and WizzAir, 91%. Air Asia boasted a 90.9% ‘occupancy rate.'
