Tag Archives for largest airline.
According to schedule data from Cirium Diio Mi, American Airlines is the largest U.S. (and world) airline by flights and seats flown, but United Airlines is the largest in March schedules by seat miles flown. United flies big planes farther.
The four largest airlines in the world by seats being flown right now are all U.S. carriers. Somewhat surprising to me, the fifth-largest airline by seat capacity is Indian discounter IndiGo. There are 3 Chinese airlines in the top 10 largest, but they’ve dropped down to spots 6-8 as they pull back domestic capacity.
A week ago Delta was briefly the largest airline in the world by scheduled seats. They’ve dropped back down to number three. However the largest airline in the world right now isn’t American Airlines, as they usually claim. It’s actually China Southern Airlines (which is part-owned by American, and also Qatar, though is largely a state-owned enterprise).
These are the top 10 airlines in the world based on their size (scheduled seat capacity) right now:
This morning Edward Russell noted at the Points Guy that Delta earned more revenue than American in the last quarter, and United has more seat capacity than both. The title of his post, “American Airlines Loses World’s Largest Airline Title to Delta and United.”
Lucky at One Mile at a Time picks this up, while noting American has a larger fleet and more employees. He suggests American’s personnel count “is just to say that they aren’t very efficient.”
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
