New data from OAG reveals that American Airlines continues to dominate the global aviation landscape, holding its position as the world’s largest airline in terms of frequencies. For the current month, American Airlines boasts an impressive 196,300 frequencies, a significant lead of 39,500 frequencies over Delta Air Lines, which ranks as the second-largest airline by this metric.
United Airlines, securing the third spot, demonstrates the most robust growth in additional flying, adding 11,900 more frequencies compared to last year. Delta Air Lines also shows strong expansion, increasing its frequencies by 9,500. While these major carriers expand, IndiGo continues its remarkable trajectory as the fastest-growing airline globally, with a 10.7% increase in frequencies year-on-year. Conversely, JetBlue is experiencing the largest rate of decline, down 6.4% in frequencies compared to last year.
The United States maintains its position as the largest domestic aviation market worldwide, offering 91.8 million seats this month. This figure is more than 20.6 million seats larger than the second-largest domestic market, China, which has 71.1 million seats.
Brazil is emerging as the fastest-growing domestic market within the Top 10, exhibiting a strong growth rate of 9.7% over last year, closely followed by India with a 9.5% increase. In contrast, Indonesia continues to be the domestic market within the Top 10 showing the largest rate of decline, down 6.8% versus last year, a persistent trend observed over the past two months. Other domestic markets experiencing declines this month include Australia (-0.4%), Spain (-1.0%), and Japan (-1.7%).
Globally, May 2025 will see total capacity reach 522.3 million seats, representing a 4% increase on May 2024, an addition of 19.1 million seats. North America leads regional capacity with 115.2 million seats, closely followed by Western Europe with 114.6 million seats.
North East Asia is the region with the largest growth in seat capacity this month, adding 4.3 million more seats compared to last year, bringing its total to 112.7 million. The regions demonstrating the highest growth rates are Central Asia and Lower South America, with capacity increases of 14% and 10% respectively. Central/Western Africa is the only region to report a decline in capacity compared to last year, down 7%.
