When compiling the list for the Top 5 – Biggest Airlines in the world 2023, I’ll use the number of passengers. I extracted the data from the annual reports of the airlines. At the end of 2023, American Airlines was the biggest airline when looking at passengers carried and the only airline who carried more than 200 Million passengers.
Please see below the Top 5 of Biggest Airlines 2023.
| American Airlines | 210.7 |
| Delta Airlines | 190 |
| RyanAir | 181.8 |
| SouthWest | 171.8 |
| United Airlines | 165 |
There are only 2 other airlines who have carried more than 100M passengers in 2023; Lufthansa (122.5M) and IAG (115M). Air France-KLM came close to 100M passengers and carried 93,6M passengers; they ranked number 8 on the 2023 list.
NOTE: American Airlines only provides ‘enplaned passengers’ in their annual report. Delta, nor RyanAir, specify in their annual report whether the passenger number corresponds to revenue passengers or enplaned passengers. United Airlines reports on revenue passengers. Southwest reports on both; the number above corresponds to the enplaned passengers. The revenue passenger number for Southwest in 2023 was 137.2M
Passenger count 2022
All the airlines above carried substantially more passengers in 2023 compared to 2022. Please see below the 2022 passenger count (taking the enplaned passengers number where available).
| American Airlines | 199.3 |
| Delta Airlines | 171.4 |
| RyanAir | 168.6 |
| SouthWest | 157 |
| United Airlines | 144.3 |
| Lufthansa | 101.8 |
| IAG | 94.7 |
| AF-KLM | 83.3 |
Most airlines from the top 8 saw their passenger numbers increase with more than 10% in 2023. Both Lufthansa and IAG both saw even an increase of more than 20%. Only American Airlines and RyanAir saw an increase of less than 10%. American Airlines 5.7% and RyanAir 7.8%.
2023 Number of Employees
Another interesting stat to look at, is the number of employees. Especially when comparing the number of employees of the 3rd biggest airline RyanAir, with its competitors.
| American Airlines | 132 |
| Delta Airlines | 95 |
| RyanAir | 22 |
| SouthWest | 75 |
| United Airlines | 103 |
| Lufthansa | 110 |
| IAG | 70 |
| AF-KLM | 79 |
2023 Annual Revenue
Please see below the 2023 Revenue numbers in Billions. When just looking at revenue, the top 5 of biggest airlines, looks quite different! Delta takes the top spot with more than $54B and both RyanAir and SouthWest fall out of the top 5.
| American Airlines | $52.3 |
| Delta Airlines | $54.7 |
| RyanAir | $11.2 |
| SouthWest | $26.1 |
| United Airlines | $48.8 |
| Lufthansa | €35.4 |
| IAG | €29.4 |
| AF-KLM | €30 |
2023 Aircraft
Finally the number of Aircraft by end of 2023. Expect a big change in these numbers in the coming years considering the number of aircraft orders and forecasted arrival of new planes.
| American Airlines | 1521 |
| Delta Airlines | 982 |
| RyanAir | 537 |
| SouthWest | 847 |
| United Airlines | 1358 |
| Lufthansa | 721 |
| IAG | 582 |
| AF-KLM | 551 |
Also read: KLM Premium Comfort Review
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