Countries with the highest number of airline passengers globally 2021

The United States had the largest commercial air travel market in 2021, with just over 666 million passengers boarding planes registered to American and international air carriers. The next largest market was China, with more than 440 million passengers, while the Eurozone ranked in third place, with almost 252 million passengers.

Passenger measurement

Measuring the number of passengers boarded by carriers registered in a country provides an indication of the size of that country’s airline industry, but it does not measure the amount of air travel in that country. For example, as Ryanair is registered in Ireland, all Ryanair flights count as Irish, even if the flight was between, say, Berlin and London. One way to measure the number of air passengers within a country is to look at the number of passengers passing through airports in that country. Alternatively, the level of travel within an airline market can be considered at the regional level, in which case North America slips back to third behind the Asia Pacific region and Europe.

Erasing two decades of growth in global air travel

Regardless of how passenger numbers are measured, global air travel increased rapidly over the last decade. However, this was not the case in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic erased two decades of global passenger traffic growth, cutting the number of air passengers to only 1.8 billion and the number of flights globally to 16.9 million. Looking at this period, the Middle East region was affected the most, with seat capacity down 63 percent compared to 2019.