palmetto86

I've done a fair amount of Internet research to try and satiate my curiosity, but I haven't been able to find the exact numbers I'm looking for.

I'm interested in understanding the distribution of air miles flown (domestic, intl, or both) across the U.S. population? I know I've read something like 15% of Americans have never flown before.

I'm sure that of the people that do fly, the distribution probably comes close to the Pareto principle (~20% of flyers fly ~80% miles flown)--pretty much consumption of anything comes close to that distribution. Ideally, I would like to find a distribution curve, but I haven't had any luck.

Any of you out there in the travel industry or travel marketing and know where I could find something like this? I'm not searching for any particular reason, just my own curiosity. It's something I've clearly thought about a lot ; )

tjl

Wonder how this varies by state of residency, particularly in Hawaii and Alaska.

MSPeconomist

At the time of the merger, DL was said to have slightly more than 80,000,000 FF accounts, of which about 2,000,000 were elite (25,000 status miles per year or the parallel requirement of 30 segments). Of there, roughly 40,000 became charter DMs with 125,000 status miles annually or a similar segment requirement.

Beyond such similar data provided by airlines from time to time, carriers consider their FF numbers to be proprietary. In addition, it would be difficult to determine how many people have elite status on more than one carrier to attempt to get the distributions by individuals of total miles flown, rather than miles flown on a single carrier/alliance.

pinniped

I would guess that Alaska would rank #1 in per capita takeoffs and landings. They're #1 in a lot of per capita private aviation metrics (licensed pilots, etc.), but we're talking short flights generally speaking...

valdor

I'd be curious to know how many of these accounts are active and how many actually belong to US residents. US ff programs are quite popular in other countries (or used to be before the recent changes) and almost all my international friends have an account with at least one of the legacy carriers.

lhrsfo

I would imagine that the distribution is even more skewed than 20% doing 80% of the miles, because there are relatively few long haul travellers but they clock up miles much more quickly. But, of course, it's pure guesswork.

GUWonder

The USG can calculate it or have it calculated within a reasonably small margin of error. Keep in mind that the unfunded DHS/TSA mandates upon airlines serving the US create a treasure trove of data.

My guess is that 10% of the population accounts for 80+% of annually flown domestic US seat miles.

cubbie

Pareto principle. Hunh. Makes it sound like an amazing discovery. 68, 95, and 99.7 percent of anything that is normally distributed lies within the ranges +/- 1, 2, or 3 standard deviations from the mean. As the second chart here shows, 80% lies within +/- 1.3 standard deviations:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/68–95–99.7_rule

The first question, I think, should be is the thing of interest normally distributed? In this case, I don't think so. You can have done zero travel by air, but you can't have done less than zero. More likely it's a log-normal (zero-bounded, asymmetric, long-tailed) distribution. Not that the 80-20 approximation wouldn't still be in the right ballpark.

Kagehitokiri

this kind of thing is discussed in terms of revenue

small percentage of customers/clients make up large percentage of revenue

can see discussion in public financial statements etc

airlines have had it, starwood had a quote in media

84fiero

Would that apply to number of miles flown, though? Airlines don't sell travel on a per-mile basis. And distance of a flight isn't necessarily proportional to the revenue for that flight. So even if 20% of passengers provide 80% of sales or profits, that likely wouldn't tie directly miles flown per person.

Are you thinking of lifetime miles flown or annual miles flown? And only scheduled commercial flights?

Is there any reliable data on total number of miles flown annually? You could make some educated guess I suppose, if you had a total figure to distribute. For example, in 2010 the census reported that 6.5% of the population was under age 5. While little ones do fly, I'd think the overall rate is pretty low. Another 17.5% are between ages 5 and 17, where the amount of flying would start to increase but still be fairly low...no idea how to guess the rate though. Same with older folks, who on an annual basis will generally fly less and less as they age.

sbm12

Sure. Every publicly traded US-based airline publishes data publishes ASM and RSM data in each quarterly and annual report.

GUWonder

Given how much data the USG has collected and analyzed about passengers, would you bet that there is a very good idea about what small proportion of US passengers account for the vast majority of US travel? The whole targeting of passengers for "trusted traveler" status wasn't built upon an idea that a small proportion of the public being in these programs was enough to cover enough passengers to make things more cost-effective? Oh, wait; "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

84fiero

I guess I should've made clear: "by US residents/citizens" since that is what the OP is after. I don't think that level of granularity is reported. Even if US airLines did report that we'd be missing travel by Americans on foreign and/or private operators.

GUWonder's point about US gov data might have some of it. But even that would be incomplete for OP's query as it wouldn't include travel by Americans where the USG doesn't have insight.

RustyC

Would echo that I think biz travel is even more concentrated than 80-20...probably more like 95-5. Most people get little to none, and some get probably more than they need.

It used to be the % of Americans with passports was pretty low, but post-9/11 changes made 'em required for places like Cancun/Bahamas or cruises where people might've done without them before.

Also, all the mergers and consolidation that led to recent negative changes in FF programs, among other things, also were bad for flight cutbacks and cities like MEM or CVG really losing flights. And second-tier cities like CAE or GSP would always struggle to get or hold service. My hunch is you have bugger and bigger sections of the national map where people either have to put up with high legacy fares or drive quite a distance to the nearest truly competitive airport.

Allegiant is an interesting bet, as they'll go to some places with minimal service like CHA or FAR and fly either to Florida or Las Vegas, targeting vacationers.

sbm12

The airlines do publish dat for domestic operations separate from international so that part can be sussed out. But they do not note the nationality of each traveler.