FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
INTL STATION LOAD FACTORS REPORT
2) HOW IS THE DATA CALCULATED/WHAT DOES ITALICS MEAN?
3) HOW ARE SEAT BLOCKS TREATED?
5) WHY DO PAST MONTHS CHANGE IN SUBSEQUENT UPDATES?
6) WHAT IS THE MINIMUM NUMBER OF FLIGHTS SHOWN?
8) WHY HAVE A MINIMUM NUMBER OF FLIGHTS?
1) I CAN'T SEE THE DATA?
This data is available to INTL TIER and above. If no routes were flown during the period that qualify the report will be blank. This city is shown as an airport with international service history and is on the report calendar, but there may be periods with no data.
2) HOW IS THE DATA CALCULATED/WHAT DOES ITALICS MEAN?
The base data is extracted from DOT T100 reporting. There is a heavy lag, however, so periods beyond are forecast using CBP arrival data by day/month/hour/terminal and mapped back as best as possible to individual carriers. There is also trending based on changes in capacity and overall load changes at airports based on real-time CBP data. That forecast data is shown in italics. 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 150-180 day delay imposed by the DOT on the release of the data. Forecasting has been used to make the data much more current with forecast data shown in italics.
5) WHY DO PAST MONTHS CHANGE IN SUBSEQUENT UPDATES?
The data shown in italics are forecast and may be re-forecast in subsequent months before being finalized when they are officially reported by DOT.
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.