Page 24 - Planning and Design of Airports

The Natur e of Civil Aviation and Airports 5

1,200,000
Historical Forecast
1,000,000 Revenue Passengers (thousands)
Revenue Passenger-Miles (millions)
Passengers (thousands) Passenger-Miles (millions) 600,000
800,000

400,000

200,000

0
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030
Year
FIGURE 1-1 Total scheduled U.S. domestic passenger traffi c: 1940 to 2020
(U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics).

nearly 90 percent of the total intercity (defined as trips greater than
50 mi in distance) travel in the United States, and public transporta-
tion or common-carrier travel (bus, rail, and air) accounts for the
remaining portion.
Since the later half of the twentieth century, there has been a
steady increase in overall travel, by private automobile and public
transportation. Air transportation has had the greatest increase in
overall passengers served. In the United States, this period has also
witnessed a dramatic reduction in rail travel except for the rail mar-
kets in the Northeast United States. These relationships are shown in
Table 1-1.
As illustrated in Table 1-2, air transportation in the United States
accounts for the vast majority of domestic travel for trips exceeding
750 mi, and approximately one third of trips 500 to 750 mi in length. In
all, air transportation accounts for approximately 70 percent of the
United States’ public intercity transportation. With the exception of
travel to Canada and Mexico, air transportation serves nearly 100 per-
cent of travel between the United States and international destinations.
In many parts of the world the use of private automobile is much
less significant, and the use of rail transportation is much more prev-
alent. However, growth in commercial aviation in markets such as
Europe and India are forecast to take greater numbers of passengers
off the rails and onto airlines.
Much of the historical growth in air carrier transportation has been
largely credited to the 1978 Federal Airline Deregulation Act, which
allowed air carriers to freely enter and compete in domestic markets in