Revenue Passengers

The number of paying passengers an airline carried in the period -- a raw traffic count. Airlines count it differently: most count a traveller on a connecting trip once for each flight taken, while some count each trip once -- Southwest, for example, reports passengers carried well below its count of passengers boarded (enplaned passengers), which counts every flight -- so compare one airline with itself before comparing two. On its own it says nothing about how far people flew or what they paid, so for revenue analysis airlines convert it into revenue passenger miles (paying passengers times miles flown), which pair with capacity (ASMs) to produce load factor and yield. It is most useful as scale context and for spotting traffic trends, not for comparing profitability between carriers.

Related terms

Accounts Payable · Adjusted EBITDA · Adjusted EBITDA Ex-SBC · Administered-Only Members · ADR · ARPU

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