AIRLINES in Asia-Pacific carried the largest number of passengers in the world last year, according to the 58th edition of World Air Transport Statistics recently released by IATA.
In terms of total passengers carried on scheduled services by airlines in each region, Asia-Pacific topped with about one billion passengers, a year-on-year rise of 9.3 per cent.
Europe took second place (825.9 million), followed by North America (818.9 million), Latin America and the Caribbean (240.5 million), the Middle East (157.9 million) and Africa (73.8 million).
Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, China Southern Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines were the top five airlines in terms of passengers carried.
Hong Kong-Taipei, Dublin-London and Jakarta-Singapore were the top three city-pairs for international routes.
The report also reveals that airlines added over 1,100 direct airport-pair services and 600,000 frequencies.
In terms of airline alliances, Star Alliance continued to be the largest with 26.6 per cent of total scheduled traffic, followed by SkyTeam (20.1 per cent) and Oneworld (15.4 per cent).
