Miami, July 10, 2017 – The Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association (ALTA) announced today that Latin America and Caribbean airlines carried 13.1 million passengers in May, up 8.5% from the previous year, excluding domestic traffic in Brazil, marking the 69th consecutive month of passenger traffic growth for Latin America and Caribbean airlines. Traffic (RPK) grew 10.3% and capacity (ASK) increased 7.4%, bringing up the load factor to 81.4%, equivalent to 2.2 percentage points higher than in May 2016 (see table 1).

Overall, Latin America and Caribbean airlines carried 20.2 million passengers in May, up 6.8% - or 1,279,821 more passengers - from the previous year. Traffic (RPK) grew 8.4% and capacity (ASK) increased 6.3%, bringing up the load factor to 80.6%, 1.5 percentage points higher than in May 2016. Freight ton kilometers increased 4.9% in May 2017 as compared with the same month of the previous year, reaching 374 million FTKs (see table 2).