OAG, the global travel and transport information company, has calculated that the world's scheduled airlines - including Low Cost Carriers - offered a record 3.3 billion* seats (3,297,362,597) on 28.2 million flights (28,240,490) during 2006. That represents an average daily offer of over 9 million seats on 77,371 individual daily flights.

Total seat offer year-on-year was up 3.4% from the 3.2 billion seats (3,187,855,301) offered in 2005 across 27.7 million flights (27,730,443). Scheduled flights increased 1.8% from 2005 to 2006 with 2,856 new direct or re-instated services being introduced during the year.

Of the new flights introduced in 2006 the route with the largest seat offering was the domestic service between Tokyo Haneda and Osaka Kobe in Japan which offered 773,871 seats on 3,853 flights. All the top ten new non-stop routes in 2006 in terms of seats offered were domestic services with four in Japan, five in the US, and one, from the Galapagos Islands to Guayaquil, in Ecuador. In Europe the new service offering the greatest number of seats was between Antalya in Turkey and Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, which put 200,124 seats up for sale on 612 flights.

Domestic services also dominated the top ten new routes in terms of scheduled flight frequencies. Dallas/Forth Worth Love Field to St Louis Lambert in the US held the number one new route by adding 5,387 frequencies and 723,300 seats in 2006. US domestic routes, including the new helicopter service in New York between JFK and downtown Manhattan, held five of the top ten places with new Japanese domestic services taking a further four slots. The new service between Palm Island and Townsville in Australia, in fifth place with 3,586 new flights and 58,828 seats, rounded out the top ten.

The new route between Loja and Quito in Ecuador, which offered 2,150 flights and 120,470 seats, was the top new route in Latin America in terms of flight frequencies, while in Europe the honour went to the new service between London City Airport and Newcastle that offered 1,620 flights and 57,900 seats.

The longest scheduled route flown in 2006 was between Newark (EWR) and Singapore (SIN) with an elapsed time of 18 hours and 40 minutes. The flight is operated by Singapore Airlines using an Airbus A340-500 to cover the 9,523 miles (8,275 nautical miles; 15,325 kms).

The shortest scheduled route flown in 2006 was between Papa Westray (PPW) and Westray (WRY) in the United Kingdom with an elapsed time of 2 minutes. The flight is operated by Loganair using a Britten-Norman Islander to cover just 9 miles (8 nautical miles; 14 kms).

Low Cost Growth

Low Cost Carriers offered a total of 549,078,161 seats in 2006 on 3,815,204 flights, which represents 17% of the total number of scheduled seats on offer worldwide. Within the US the capacity share of the Low Cost Carriers was 27%, slightly more than Europe where the offer was 24%.

In the Asia/Pacific region, Low Cost Carriers offered just 9% of the total number of seats on offer by scheduled airlines in 2006, but the low cost sector has seen sizeable growth throughout the region when compared to 2005, with both seat offer and frequency up over 55% year on year.

Total low cost seat offer year-on-year was up nearly 16% globally in 2006 from the 474,080,924 seats offered in 2005 on 3,384,166 flights. Scheduled low cost flights increased 13% from 2005 to 2006.

"The facts show that scheduled airlines offered more seats in 2006 than ever before with more than 3 billion seats being made available to the flying public," explains Duncan Alexander, managing director at OAG. "At a very conservative estimate of a 70% load factor that means over 2.3 billion passengers will have flown during 2006. That is more than 6.3 million people flying every day of the year on either business or leisure."

"Given the schedules already in the OAG system for the first quarter of 2007, the trend of more seats and flights being offered by the world's scheduled airlines, and more people flying on both long and short haul, looks to continue."