BTS to will begin releasing preliminary estimates of airline passenger travel in 2025

For the first time, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) is releasing preliminary estimates for monthly enplanements.

Monthly passenger enplanement numbers are not reported by the carriers and published by BTS for the month until more than a month later. BTS developed a model, which uses a strong statistical relationship between enplanements and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint screening to estimate enplanements on the day after the month has ended when screenings are reported.

The preliminary estimates for October, November, and December 2024 are now available with the final counts dating back to January 2019.

“BTS is extremely proud of this new model and looks forward to expanding its use to multiple BTS products and datasets,” said Pat Hu, director of BTS. “Since its creation, BTS ensured that all information and data was accurate and ready for analysis, but we always strive to provide more timely data, and this will help us do both.”

The ability to forecast passenger data will help the Department of Transportation provide more timely passenger travel information for the entire transportation sector and allow for the airline industry and travel aviation community to better prepare for the entire calendar year.

BTS’ estimation model is based on a regression analysis of enplanement and inspection data 2019 and from the years 2022-2024. The model is 99% accurate, and documentation of the methodology is available here.

BTS will continue to release the monthly airline traffic final totals, as we have since October of 2002. The last release was for the month of September 2024.