FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
ROUTE MARKET SHARE REPORT
3) WHAT CARRIERS ARE INCLUDED?
4) A CARRIER SEEMS TO BE MISSING?
6) THE COLOR FOR AN AIRLINE IS WRONG?
7) WHERE CAN I FIND THE CARRIER NAMES FROM THE IATA CODE?
8) IS THIS DATA POINT-OF-SALE?
9) DOES THIS INCLUDE CONNECTIONS?
10) IS THIS ONBOARD OR ORIGIN-DESTINATION DATA?
11) WHAT CHANGED IN APRIL 2023?
12) WHY ARE THE AIRLINES DIFFERENT ON THE CHARTS?
13) WHY ARE THE TIMELINES DIFFERENT ON THE CHARTS?
14) WHAT ARE THE RESIDENT AND VISITOR CHARTS, HOW DO I READ THEM??
2) HOW DO I READ IT?
This data shows revenue market share including ancillary revenue in later years by quarter since 1979 using DOT data. The wider the color bar is for the airline the higher their share was during that period. The full width represents 100% share. The report shows only the Top 5 carriers with all other carriers in the OTHER category which is light gray and flush against the right side. All named carriers are shown in alphabetical order left to right. The data is quarterly, but the airlines are listed once per year. Carriers that operate seasonally may not be listed if they did not make the Top 5 in Q1. [This visualization was designed for this site and is (c)Enilria.]
3) WHAT CARRIERS ARE INCLUDED?
Any carrier that filed origin and destination data in DB1A or DB1B is included. Unlike the Station Market Share Report, the listed carrier is shown regardless of mergers or regional affiliation. If a regional carrier reported the data and no marketing carrier is reported it will show the regional carrier's code. As the years progressed it became more and more unlikely a regional would report under its own code, but it was very likely in the early years of the data if the carrier was large enough to be requried to report origin and destination data.
4) A CARRIER SEEMS TO BE MISSING?
Only carriers listed in DB1A or DB1B are shown. No attempt is made to correct the data..
5) WHAT ARE THE COLORS USED?
An attempt has been made to match the color to the airline's logo, although carrier colors and logos changed and only a single color is shown.
6) THE COLOR FOR AN AIRLINE IS WRONG?
Logos changed colors and also more than one airline may have used the same reporting code. For example, FL was both Frontier Airlines and Air Tran.
7) WHERE CAN I FIND THE CARRIER NAMES FROM THE IATA CODE?
The Flashback Post FAQ has a number of airline codes for several periods HERE.
8) IS THIS DATA POINT-OF-SALE?
No. Going all the way back to 1979 and using route level data created the tradeoff of not having sufficient data to provide point-of-sale detail.
9) DOES THIS INCLUDE CONNECTIONS?
This is ORIGIN-DESTINATION data so it only includes connections in between the two listed cities, it does not include passengers upline or downline to the listed route. For example, for ATL-LGA it includes: ATL-LGA, ATL-CLT-LGA, ATL-DCA-LGA, ATL-DTW-LGA, etc. It does not include: MIA-ATL-LGA, ATL-LGA-BOS, etc.
10 IS THIS ONBOARD OR ORIGIN-DESTINATION DATA?
Market share is calculated using ORIGIN-DESTINATION (O and D) data. ONBOARD data is only the number of passengers on a given airplane. It is useful for calculating load factor. Marketshare confines the data to the origin and destination points of a passenger's trip, not the takeoff and landing point of separate flights along the way. If a passenger flew HSV-DFW-LAX-DEN-HSV that is generally considered a roundtrip where the origin is HSV and the destination is LAX. Market share would be calculated among all passengers traveling from HSV to LAX, and in the case of this report it would be combined with other passengers traveling LAX to HSV since this report is not point-of-sale. Unrelated to this calculation, onboard data (also known as leg data) would be used to calculate the load factors on each of the 4 flights the passenger used along their journey. e.g. HAV-DFW, DFW-LAX, LAX-DEN, and DEN-HSV.
11) WHAT CHANGED IN APRIL 2023?
Resident and Visitor charts were added. These give additional detail about the market and show each carrier's relative strength by point of sale. RESIDENT/VISITOR is determined based on the first city alphabetically in the city pair. For JFK-LAX, RESIDENT would be residents of New York City as determined based on the origin point on their entire ticket. VISITOR would residents of Los Angeles, AKA visitors to New York City Point of sale data is only available back to 1993, so the RESIDENT and VISITOR charts begin at 1993. As a result of data warehousing decisions related to the AIRPORT MARKET SHARE report (which also has Resident and Visitor data), RESIDENT and VISITOR charts show carriers combined that later merged in the same way the AIRPORT MARKET SHARE REPORT does.
12) WHY ARE THE AIRLINES DIFFERENT ON THE CHARTS?
As a result of data warehousing decisions related to the AIRPORT MARKET SHARE report (which also has Resident and Visitor data), RESIDENT and VISITOR charts show carriers combined that later merged in the same way the AIRPORT MARKET SHARE REPORT does.
13) WHY ARE THE TIMELINES DIFFERENT ON THE CHARTS?
Point of sale data is only available back to 1993, so the RESIDENT and VISITOR charts begin at 1993.
14) WHAT ARE THE RESIDENT AND VISITOR CHARTS, HOW DO I READ THEM?
Resident and Visitor charts give additional detail about the market and show each carrier's relative strength by point of sale. RESIDENT/VISITOR is determined based on the first city alphabetically in the city pair. For JFK-LAX, RESIDENT would be residents of New York City as determined based on the origin point on their entire ticket. VISITOR would residents of Los Angeles, AKA visitors to New York City Point of sale data is only available back to 1993, so the RESIDENT and VISITOR charts begin at 1993.