The air traffic is USA is increasing over the last years:
Year. United States
2009 679,423,408
2010 720,497,000
2011 730,796,000
2012 736,699,000
2013 743,096,000
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR
The frequency of air travel by a unique person is not in that item. That a rich subset of the American population can take multiple more trips annually than the average American household masks how air travel has become less affordable for the average American household even as the wealthiest amongst us take more flights than a decade or two ago. This just goes back to the notion of the gap between the richest of us and the rest of the country is rather wide and wider than it used to be at some prior points in time.
The fact is that silo data doesn't paint a meaningful picture in the way that more complex analysis of silo-crossing data does.
The difference in ability to understand comes down to who wants to be and needs to be spoon-fed and who doesn't need to be spoon-fed data to figure this out on their own instead of relying upon a silo metric or two that masks what it doesn't track.