August 2023 U.S. Airline Traffic Data Up 8.4% from the Same Month Last Year :: Hospitality Trends

U.S. airlines carried 83.1 million systemwide (domestic and international) scheduled service passengers in August 2023, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). When adjusted for seasonality, August enplanements are up 1.7% from July and down 4.2% from the all-time high reached in January 2020.

BTS reported 71.5 million domestic passengers and 11.6 million international passengers on U.S. airlines flights in August, not adjusting for seasonality.

U.S. airline traffic reports are filed monthly with BTS. See the tables that accompany this release on the BTS website for summary data since 2016 (Tables 1-24) and complete data since 2000.

Two measures of U.S. airlines passenger enplanements

August seasonally adjusted

• Systemwide enplanements (77.4M) were down 4.2% from the all-time high of 80.8 million reached in January 2020.
• Domestic enplanements (67.1M) were down 5.4% from the all-time high of 71.0 million reached in January 2020.
• International enplanements (10.3M) reached a new all-time, seasonally-adjusted, high based on data through August 2023.

August unadjusted

• Systemwide enplanements (83.1M) were down 0.9% from the all-time August high (83.8M) reached in 2019.
• Domestic enplanements (71.5M) were down 1.7% from the all-time August high (72.7M) reached in 2019.
• International enplanements (11.6M) reached a new all-time high for the month of August.​

Table A. Seasonally Adjusted Passenger Enplanements Compared to Previous Time Periods 

Seasonally Adjusted	Passengers (in millions)	Percent Change Compared to
		Previous Month	Previous Year	Three Years Previous
August	77.4	1.7%	8.4%	217.8%

Table B. Unadjusted Passenger Enplanements Compared to Previous Time Periods

Unadjusted	Passengers (in millions)	Percent Change Compared to
		Previous Year	Two Years Previous	Three Years Previous
August	83.1	8.4%	24.0%	221.5%