Airlines open and drop thousands of routes every year, mostly cancelling out. The surge of new routes in the early two-thousands is partly smaller carriers joining the data.
What this shows: The chart covers 1991 to 2024. It plots New routes, Dropped routes and Net change on a vertical axis of Number of routes. Latest values: New routes 2,074; Dropped routes -2,335; Net change -261. Data run through 2024.
Conditions and method
From 2002 Q4 the data cover more of the network, because a federal reporting rule added the smaller airlines to them. Between 2001 and 2002, new routes go from 2,269 to 4,926 and dropped routes from 2,656 to 2,655. There is a step in new routes across that year and none in dropped routes. Part of that step is the wider coverage, and the series cannot separate it from a change in the network. A step is a change larger than all but 5% of the series’ other year-to-year changes.