Every year, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) collect enplanement and all-cargo data from airports across the country. That data is used in formulaic calculations to determine airport categories and guide the allotment of annual entitlement funds. Enplanement counts are the major determining factor in these calculations. The DOT and FAA release the data and statistics to the public on their websites.
Enplanement is an aviation statistics term used to refer to the act of a passenger boarding an airplane. The DOT makes a distinction between an enplanement and a trip: during one trip, a single passenger may board many planes. Each new boarding event counts as a separate enplanement. Note that enplanements do not track an airport's total passenger traffic; arriving passengers (i.e., passengers getting off an airplane) are not included in the enplanement count.
Enplanements are used to evaluate the passenger-associated demand placed on commercial service airports, particularly gate and luggage demands. Enplanement counts are a standard metric for estimating airport capacity and funding needs.
To create the initial dataset used in this map, twenty U.S. cities showing the highest enplanement counts in 2023 were identified. Enplanement data from 2013 to 2023 was then compiled for those twenty cities. Newark, Philadelphia, and Fort Lauderdale were removed from the final map dataset to limit large overlap of proportional symbols in the Northeast and Florida.
The remaining seventeen cities are listed below in alphabetical order:
This map shows the exact annual enplanement counts in seventeen major U.S. cities. All contributing airports are listed within a city's popup. Some cities have multiple airports contributing to the counts; some have only one. The goal of this map is to encourage thought and discussion about the rising number of passengers at major cities. What factors might be contributing to this rise in numbers? Why might some cities have a higher passenger count than others? Are there any outlier trends or anomalies?