Aviation

The 2022 Transportation Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) provides current and future projections of fuel consumption, cost, and emissions in domestic, commercial aviation for passenger and freight transport in the United States (i.e. not including future battery electric, hybrid, or fuel cell aircraft; international, private, or military aviation).

The Transportation ATB provides (1) data for conventional aviation fuel for the year 2022 in a summary table and (2) projections using both conventional aviation and sustainable aviation fuel characteristics in an interactive table showing:

Fuel consumption, which represents aviation fuel consumption for domestic aviation passenger or passenger and freight transport
Fuel cost, which represents the total costs for fuel incurred in domestic aviation passenger or passenger and freight transport
Fuel emissions, which are reported in metric tons of CO₂equivalent, represent greenhouse gas emissions from aviation fuel combustion.

Fuel Consumption, Fuel Cost, and CO2 Emissions

Key Assumptions

The data and estimates presented here are based on the following key assumptions:

Base Year: The assumed base year for aviation is 2019, because this is the most recent data with a full year of pre-COVID aviation activity.
Base Year Fuel Costs: Base year fuel costs are calculated using T-100 Market and Segment data, airline fuel cost and consumption monthly reports, and fuel costs and gallons consumed by air carrier and category of fuel use [Schedule P-12(a), Bureau of Transportation Statistics] (BTS, 2019).
Passenger-Miles and Seat-Miles: The total passenger-miles and total seat-miles are from the T-100 Market and Segment data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS, 2019). The 2019 aviation sector activity was 889 billion total domestic available seat-miles and 755 billion total domestic revenue passenger-miles. For the year from September 2021 to August 2022, the corresponding values had rebounded to 835 billion seat-miles and 688 billion passenger-miles.

To see the citations for the values in the table, point to a number in the table with your mouse, or download the data file from the data page.

Definitions

For detailed definitions, see:

Emissions

Scenarios

Passenger-mile

References

The following references are specific to this page; for all references in this ATB, see References.

BTS. “2019 Traffic Data for U.S. Airlines and Foreign Airlines U.S. Flights - Final, Full-Year | Bureau of Transportation Statistics,” 2019. https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/final-full-year-2019-traffic-data-us-airlines-and-foreign-airlines.