Explorer In development
The Explorer is a set of interactive tools built on the models behind this site. It is not part of this release. The charts and findings carry every published result.
One tool lets a reader change the economy and watch the fitted US demand model answer: set income growth, fuel prices, inflation and unemployment, and read off a quarterly passenger estimate. Another sets the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, the financial crisis, the oil-price crash of the mid twenty-tens and the pandemic side by side from the start of each, so that the depth of each fall in US air travel and the length of the recovery can be compared. A third looks up any US airport or city pair: who flies there, what it costs and how competitive the route is.
Others compare what it costs an airline to fly a seat one mile with what that seat earns, by carrier type, or follow the age and cost of aircraft in US fleets and how long airframes stay in service. The elasticity tool compares how strongly flying responds to income across the models, then state by state, and the freight tool tracks US air cargo, its carriers and the split between all-cargo airlines and airlines that also carry passengers. Each tool reads the same fitted models and public data as the charts. They are being finished and checked.