Insight Articles

This is T2RL's 9th edition of the global passenger volumes analysis. The 8th edition was published in June 2024. The aviation industry has since made a strong recovery from the impact of COVID-19, with 2024 showing a steady increase in air traffic, flight frequencies, and the number of routes operated. This report analyses full-year traffic data for 2024 and compares the growth trajectory with previous years.

While the world was still emerging from the effects of the pandemic, it faced two significant geopolitical challenges: the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Israel-Palestine unrest. Airlines based in these regions were forced to suspend commercial operations, focusing solely on repatriation flights. In response, many international carriers also halted services to and from the affected areas due to escalating tensions. However, in recent months, there has been cautious optimism as selected routes have resumed, signalling a gradual return to stability in some parts of these regions.

The 2024 Global traffic numbers are positively above 2023 and have also surpassed 2019 levels.

Note: This report was prepared before the recent escalation of tension and activity between Israel and Iran and the US. However the situation develops there will be implications for air traffic in the region.

This is the sixth edition of T2RL's report on the market shares for airline revenue management (RM) systems. Published in May 2025, it gives an insight into the current challenges and opportunities faced by airlines and vendors within the domain of revenue management and pricing optimisation. Market share information is based on 2024 annual passenger volumes adjusted to include current migrations and implementations as of 31st March 2025.

T2RL measures the market for RM systems on the assumption that the value of that market is proportional to the total number of passengers carried. It was in the region of 4.8 billion passengers in 2024, up from 4.3 billion in 2023 and 3.3 billion in 2022. For the first time annual airline passenger numbers have exceeded those in 2019, before the Covid pandemic.

This 29 page report presents the detail and complexity of the current global situation.

This report is part of T2RL's series of updates on the progress of modernising airline sales and fulfilment technology. The focus remains on IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC) and ONE Order initiatives, key components of the broader movement towards a retail-oriented approach within the airline industry. This edition reflects developments up to April 2025.

Since our last report activity continues on both distribution (NDC) and on moves towards the adoption of OOSD. Four major airlines have committed to Amadeus's Nevio platform for Offers and Orders while Sabre has one customer for a comprehensive implementation of its Mosaic platform. Many other airlines have committed to the adoption of key components in the move towards modern retailing. GDS implementations of NDC continue. At the time of writing there are 218 contracts between airlines and GDSs to use the NDC standard and 141 of them have been implemented in production. This is up from 210 and 124 respectively at the time of our last report.1 Overall NDC bookings in 2023 were around 145 million but this will undoubtedly have risen in 2024. Final figures for last year are not yet in but we will have a firm number in the next edition of this report during the (Northern Hemisphere) summer of 2025.

This is a follow up to our original report on IT Service Governance published in 2020 titled SLA Design in a Complex IT EcoSystem. T2RL has undertaken further analysis of the prevailing standards in the industry, as well as emerging practices and the evolution of both experience-based service levels and artificial intelligence. This allows us to understand how service management is changing in the greater IT industry with the challenges of new service architectures and commercial models and what further improvements are required to help achieve better business outcomes, especially for the airline industry.

The transformation of airline commercial processes and technologies to an environment based on Orders rather than PNRs and tickets is now under way. Historically many airlines have acquired their central commercial systems from a single provider in the form of a Passenger Services System (PSS). This includes the core functions of inventory, reservations, ticketing and check-in. They may add other systems such as revenue management or internet booking engines which access the database of the PSS and augment its functions.

In the world of Offer Order Settle Deliver, which is also referred to as Modern Airline Retailing, some airlines will continue to buy a comprehensive service from a single vendor. However there is an expectation, not least from the standards-setting body, IATA, that it will be open to airlines to acquire technology in a modular manner and combine components from multiple vendors to create a unique commercial stack.

The purpose of this document is to identify where in the OOSD environment familiar functionality will be located. In many cases there will not be a simple one-to-one correlation between the old and the new.

This report marks the start of T2RL's coverage of the market for revenue management and dynamic pricing of ancillary products. This market is beginning to emerge as more airlines see ancillary revenue increasing in importance. It is now possible to justify the investment required to optimise the revenue derived from non-flight products. Most of the vendors associated with revenue management of flights have launched initiatives to bring ancillary revenue into their scope but it is too soon to draw any conclusions about which of them will be most successful in this new field.

This is the fifth edition of T2RL's report on the market for airline loyalty systems. This report is published in February 2025, using current contract data, passenger volume projections, and loyalty member information from 2024 to assess the market.

The report assesses the main providers in the market for airline loyalty, highlighting major changes and investments. Market share information is based on annual projected 2024 passenger and loyalty member data and takes into account current migrations and implementations as at 21st February 2025. T2RL tracks market share for loyalty systems providers in three ways; by number of airlines served, by the passenger volumes carried by those airlines and by the number of members enrolled in the programmes. Each method is valid and the relative performance measured by volume and by membership track each other fairly closely. However there are exceptions, especially where an airline has developed extensive third party participation in its programme and the tables at the end of this report reveal where those exceptions lie.

This is T2RL's 8th edition of the Airline Arrivals and Departures Report. The seventh edition was published in February 2024. It will examine the comings and goings in the aviation industry highlighting how the market has stabilised since the Covid-19 pandemic and featuring our predictions for 2025.

This is T2RL's annual assessment of the outlook for the airline industry with particular emphasis on information technology. The establishment of this report was a response to the crisis brought on by the Covid 19 pandemic but it is increasingly clear that there are many other strategic challenges that impact airlines' business plans and the technology they adopt.

This is the fifth edition of T2RL's report on the market for online direct passengers, specifically those booked via airline Internet Booking Engines (IBE). This edition, published in January 2025, describes the state of the market using current contract data along with passenger volume information relating to 2023 and projected figures for full year 2024. Our projection for 2024 shows that online direct passenger numbers are now running significantly higher than the 2.02 billion reached in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic.

This report is part of T2RL's series of updates on the progress of modernising airline sales and fulfilment technology. The focus remains on IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC) and ONE Order initiatives, key components of the broader movement towards a retail-oriented approach within the airline industry. This edition reflects developments up to December 2024.

T2RL forecasts that global passenger volumes will reach 4.82 billion in 2024, a projected 9.83% rise from the 4.39 billion passengers in 2023. This figure now surpasses pre-pandemic levels by 4%, following several years of unprecedented disruption.

This notable recovery has been driven by several factors, including the return of international travel in regions such as Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and the growth of domestic travel in key markets like China and North America.