FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
STATION LOAD FACTORS REPORT
2) HOW IS THE DATA CALCULATED?
3) HOW ARE SEAT BLOCKS TREATED?
5) WHY ARE SOME REGIONALS SHOWN?
6) WHAT IS THE MINIMUM NUMBER OF FLIGHTS SHOWN?
8) WHY HAVE A MINIMUM NUMBER OF FLIGHTS?
9) WHY ARE THERE STRANGE AIRLINES IN THE REPORT?
2) HOW IS THE DATA CALCULATED?
The base data is extracted from domestic DOT T100 reporting. Load factor is calculated as passenger miles divided into available seat miles. Directions are combined. Markets are shown alphabetically first to reduce size. (i.e. ABE-CLT and CLT-ABE become only ABE-CLT.
3) HOW ARE SEAT BLOCKS TREATED?
Airlines report seats based upon how many seats the airplane is certified to carry. Voluntary choices to block seats are not considered, although an empty seat is lost revenue regardless of the reason.
4) WHY ISN'T IT NEWER?
There is a 60-90 days delay imposed by the DOT on the release of the data.
5) WHY ARE SOME REGIONALS SHOWN?
The source T100 data does not show the marketing carrier. A number of processes are in place to attach the operating carrier to the marketing (branded) carrier. If the regional only has one marketing carrier partner I have marked all their flights to their partner (or tried to), but for regionals with multiple partners like Skywest it gets more complicated. Changes were made as of February 2023 to improve the attachment of regionals to the proper Marketing Carrier.
6) WHAT IS THE MINIMUM NUMBER OF FLIGHTS SHOWN?
There are two versions of this report. The Airline Station Load Factors Report lists all stations for an airline with their load factors sorted by percent full. This report has a minimum of 24 roundtrips per month from each station. There is also an Airport Station Load Factors Report that lists all routes flying to a single airport. For an airline's route to be shown they must have operated 10+ departures in the last 12 months, carried 50+ passengers, and must have operated 4+ times in that month.
7) WHAT DOES ** MEAN?
Data was not available for that timeframe. The flight may not have operated or met the minimum number of flights requirement.
8) WHY HAVE A MINIMUM NUMBER OF FLIGHTS?
The data also captures charters and diversions. Without a minimum number of flights the data becomes unreadable with unusual operations.
9) WHY ARE THERE STRANGE AIRLINES IN THE REPORT?
The Airport Station Load Factors Report often includes airlines that appear in government data, but do not appear in published schedules. They may be sports charters, casino charters, other types of charters, corporate shuttles, or other unknown operations that meet the minimum requirements to be shown.
10) WHERE IS INTERNATIONAL DATA?
While international data is available, the DOT imposes an additional lag on international data of 90 days, meaning this data is typically 7 months old at its newest. The decision was made to not include the data because of this increased age.
11) WHAT CHANGES WERE MADE IN FEBRUARY 2023?
As of February 2023, load factor data back to 2018 was restated in load factor posts to attach the Operating Carrier to the Marketing Carrier using data from the DOT's OnTime database which lists both Operating and Marketing carrier. In cases where the same Operating Carrier operates flights for more than one Marketing Carrier in the same non-stop city-pair, the reported Operating Carrier load factor is duplicated for each marketing carrier with departures set based upon the split of carriers in DOT On Time data.