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Traffic Data
 Pan American, B.747-100, Munich Riem 1972 (WS) Top 20 airlines by passenger miles in 1961 (in accordance with ICAO, names abbreviated):  Total RPK (revenue passenger kilometers) was listed for the year 1960 with 142 billion (according to R.E.G. Davies). For some leading airlines’ fleet see the chapter Jet Development/ Fleet.  TWA, B.747-100, Athens Ellinikon 1977 (WS)
Top 50 airlines by revenue passenger kilometers RPK in 2000 (in accordance with ICAO): 
Top 15 airlines by revenue passenger kilometers RPK in 2015 (in accordance with IATA):  IAG comprises mainly British Airways and Iberia. If the entire Lufthansa Group would be listed, it would have occupied a higher rank.
Statistics had to be changed substantially with the emergence of trusts in shared ownership, no longer the single airline brands – see the chapter Mega Groups. If China Southern, Air China and China Eastern would be considered one group due to the initial majority stake held by (different) state holdings, they would be the largest with c.413 billion RPK in 2015. For the airline’s size, the number of scheduled revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) is relevant. By number of passengers, the short-to-medium flight carriers are ranking in a misleading position. For 2014 IATA has listed the American Airlines Group with 195 million passengers occupying rank 1 also by the number of passengers, followed by Delta, United, Southwest and Ryanair. “American Airlines Group is the largest by its fleet size, revenue, profit, passengers carried and revenue passenger mile. Delta Air Lines is the largest by assets value and market capitalization” (so reported via Wikipedia, 2017). Within the IATA statistics for RPK in 2016, the American Airlines Group had achieved already 360 billion, IAG has advanced to rank 5 and Lufthansa Group to rank 7. Later Air France dropped behind, as Japan Airlines had done it already before. For investors and banks the commercial background is important. Within previous global statistics, published by Der Spiegel (29/ 2015, based on Bloomberg, Reuters, Thomson), the leader by assets was Delta with an equivalent of 29.7 billion euro, followed by American Airlines, United and Southwest. In 2000 (Jan03) American Airlines had ranked second behind Singapore Airlines, followed by Lufthansa, which then was pushed outside the top-10 by labor unions’ strikes. In the above-mentioned statistics of 2015, rank 5 was occupied already by Air China with 18.7 billion euro, followed by Ryanair, IAG, China Eastern, China Southern, Japan Airlines, easyJet, ANA, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Alaska Air Group and Hainan Airlines. Within statistics by Thomson, Reuters, Bloomberg, published by Financial Times in April 2018, American Airlines was not mentioned, but a market value was listed for Delta with $36.4 billion, Southwest 31.1bn, Air China 24.4bn, United 18.5bn, Lufthansa 15.6bn, IAG 14.7bn, China Southern 14.5bn, China Eastern 14.2bn and Japan Airlines 13.9bn. In September 2018 a fall in Air France group’s shares by 37% was reported (by Financial Times) as a result of labor unions’ strikes.
 SAS, DC-8, Athens Ellinikon 1981 (WS)
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