Sources of Airline Financial Statistics

Sources of Airline Financial Statistics

There are several ways to access BTS Airline Financial Statistics.

Prepared Tables

You can find quarterly press releases with U.S. air carrier financial statistics, including airline rankings here.

Financial statistics by carrier and carrier group can be found in the Airline Quarterly Financial Review.

Airline employment statistics from schedule P-10 can be found here.

Air Carrier Financial Statistics (Yellow Book) can be downloaded through the BTS Bookstore. For a description of this publication, please click here. For earlier years, please see a government depository library.

You may also want to contact one of the commercial data services that can produce this material for you.

Disclaimer: These private-sector sites and/or companies are not necessarily recommended, maintained, or endorsed by the US DOT or any US Government office. We offer these suggestions strictly as a convenience, should you be interested in exploring their services.

Simple Statistics

This tool allows you to search for operating profit/loss and operating revenue by carrier and quarter for carriers with revenue of $20 million or more.

A guide to airline fuel cost and consumption data can be found here.

Detailed Statistics

To access the raw data back to 1990 in TranStats, click on "Aviation" under "By Mode" on the left side. This will give you a list of aviation databases. Select the first one, "Air Carrier Financial Reports (Form 41 Financial Data)."

This page contains a list of all the financial data schedules available in TranStats:

Balance sheet data (B1, B1.1)
Aircraft Inventory Data since 2006, earlier available on request, (B-43)
Operating expense data (P-5.1, P-5.2, P-6, P-7)
Profit and loss statements (P-1.1, P-1.2)
Fuel cost and consumption (P-12A)
Number of employees (P-10)

Schedules may include data for all US carriers, or they may be divided by annual revenue level (more or less than $20 million). The totals for any given schedule can't be associated with the totals in the traffic databases, since they won't contain all the same carriers. Comparisons (revenue and number of passengers, for instance) can only be made on a carrier-by-carrier basis. Most schedules are quarterly, a few are annual, semi-annual or monthly. Remember that if the field name has "(000)" next to it, you need to multiply the results by one thousand.

P-6 and P-1.2 are the most commonly-used, since they show revenue and expense data for large airlines (quarterly). This is where you would look to find what a carrier spends on a particular item, like salaries or repairs, and how much money it takes in, such as passenger and freight revenue.

If you want to look at one or two fields (such as total revenue by carrier and quarter), click on the name of the database you want. Then click "Analysis" next to the field you are interested in (such as "Total Operating Revenue" or "Total Operating Expenses"). You can click "Crosstabs" on the left to add another variable, such as quarter (using the "Filter Columns" menu) or click "Time Series" to see multiple years of data. We advise using "Unique Carrier" for your airline field. Click "Download Results" to see the data in an Excel file. You can use the "Search the Results" feature below the TranStats logo to narrow your search. Separate your search terms with commas. For example, if you want to compare the data for several airlines, you could use one of the following searches:

UA,DL,WN
United,Delta,Southwest

If you need to see more fields, such as revenue, expense, quarter and carrier, click on "Download" under the description of the database. Use the "Filter Year" and "Filter Period" menus to narrow down the time period. Next, click the boxes beside the fields you want to see. Bear in mind that the carriers file this data by quarter and carrier region, so you may want to download those fields as well as one or more of the carrier fields, and the variable you want (revenue, expenses, etc.). Click "Download" and open the file in Excel to filter for the carrier(s) you want.

Special Requests

Financial data filed by commuter and small certificated carriers is not available online.

Please note that the following financial forms are filed:

Form 298-C, Schedule F-1 - Report of Financial Data (filed by commuter and small certificated carriers; data is restricted for 3 years)

Form 298-C, Schedule F-2 - Alaskan Carriers - Report of Aircraft Operating Expenses and Related Statistics (filed by Alaskan Carriers)

Form 298-C, Schedule F-2 - Non-Alaskan Carriers - Report of Aircraft Operating Expenses and Related Statistics (filed by small certificated carriers)

Additional Information

To find forms filed by air carriers, please click here.

For field definitions, see the Financial Reporting Categories (Item List Guide).

More guidance on accessing airline financial data in TranStats can be found in this publication: An Introduction to DOT Form 41 Web Resources for Financial Analysts, by Joan Combs Durso.

(Note: The above non-DOT publication may contain outdated information and is not necessarily recommended, maintained, or endorsed by the US DOT or any US Government office. We offer this suggestion strictly as a convenience.)

For reporting regulations, see 14 CFR 241 and 14 CFR 298.

Accounting and Reporting Directives are available on this page.

More information about US air carrier statistics can be found by searching on "Air Carrier" in the FAQ knowledgebase.