Originally Posted by
paytonc
The {last figure} can be thought of as "how many local pax are on the average flight?" -- except that you should assume it's actually half that figure, since the divisor counts only departures and not arrivals. It's a wonky number, but it makes all the difference;
O/D traffic is clearly super-important and CLE's case is pretty marginal however you slice it, much as I wish it were otherwise (having connected in ORD twice on the weekend), but that metric is even harder to interpret than you suggest because not all aircraft are the same size. In particular, the downsized UA/AA cities and CVG/CLE, which get a ton of RJ traffic with 50 or fewer seat capacity per flight, are bound to score lower in 'O/D pax per aircraft' than cities served by larger aircraft.