Seat load factor on selected flight routes

In global and European aviation, strong cost pressure has been evident since the 1990s due to rising fuel costs and competition among airlines. The mean flight prices or airline earnings per purchased passenger kilometre have thus continued to decline considerably. Airlines, particularly the airline alliances, such as StarAlliance (Lufthansa, Swiss etc.), have had to make great efforts to reduce costs. This was achieved, on the one hand, through increasing passenger capacity by using larger planes with more seats that are more densely placed. At the same time, there was a disproportionate growth in long-distance transport, which is generally handled by larger aircraft. On the other hand, increased capacity also saw an increase in seat load factors.

Flight occupancy
This development led to a considerable increase in flight occupancy (passengers per flight), which has been evident across almost all of Europe since 2004. For flights from Zurich, this value was 122 people per flight in 2016, which is an increase of 63% compared to 2004. Although the values fluctuate over the course of the year, they generally continue to increase: in April 2017, Zürich Airport recorded a mean occupancy of 128.5 people per flight (11.3% higher than in the previous year), which increased to 135.5 flight guests (5.5% higher than the previous year’s figure) in the holiday month July.

Seat load factor
The seat load factor refers to the percentage of occupied seats out of all available seats. The higher this factor, the more profitable for the airline’s operation. Seat load factors are typically around 10% higher for intercontinental flights than for short-haul flights. In April 2017, Zürich Airport recorded an average seat load factor of 80% on all passenger flights and a factor of 83% in the holiday month July.