Short
Does anyone know where I can find information on the demographics (e.g., ages, fraction of men vs. women) of air passengers in the US? We have a survey of ~2000 people conducted by Mintel, but that's the best we've found.

Long
I conduct research in how to consider body size and shape in design practice. We work a lot with vehicles, medical devices, manufacturing environments, etc. We have done some work with cockpit design, but the passenger space is largely neglected. This is mostly because there aren't a lot of opportunities: the airlines are trying to maximize passengers. Seat width is constrained by the number of seats, aisle width, and plane geometry. Seat pitch is constrained by seat and plane geometry.

Nevertheless, I think we can quantify how bad things are in useful ways. I have lots of data on the body size and shape of civilian populations. If we can make some good estimates on the demographics (or range in demographics) for flights, we can simulate plane loads of people. With these models we can answer questions like: For a given plane, what is the average level of "accommodation" (e.g., what percentage of passengers will be able to both 1) fit in their space and 2) not have it encroached upon by neighbors)?

To do this, we need data on passenger demography. We found data from Mintel--a survey of ~2000 people that details how frequently their age, gender, how frequently they fly, etc. This is, however, a relatively small sample. And it doesn't specifically answer the question of gender and age distributions on flights. Of course this varies by flight (flights to Orlando vs. Boston), day of the week, time of day, etc., but we'll take whatever we can get. Does anyone have suggestions on where we can go for more data?

Thanks!