Talk:List of largest airlines in North America

Central American Airlines
Noting that Central America is part of North America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America), then this article lacks the information about the Central American airlines (e.g. Copa, Taca).

Mexico
Mexico Is not part of central america --ROBERTO DAN 20:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

State/Provincial flags
What's the purpose of the state/provincial flags? Is it supposed to indicate where the company is headquartered? If that's the case then there are errors, Alaska Airlines is in Washington state (strangely), and all the Ontario flags should be removed. Kilrogg (talk) 08:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Passenger numbers
Are the passenger numbers based on mainline or consolidated operations? Some of the ones listed include regional affiliates, others don't. Kris1123 (talk) 16:56, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
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Alaska Air Group subsidiary Alaska Airlines and Virgin America Merger
The combined entity should create the 5th largest airline with 28,179,000 passengers in 2016, if the table and math is correct. --T-dot ( Talk/ contribs ) 19:45, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Needs update
There are many missing Major and regional airlines such as Aeromexico Connect, Aeromar, Magnicharters, TAR Aerolineas, Air Canada Rouge, Sunwing, Horizon Air and other regional carriers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:44:4203:3A30:8085:616:FF71:1BA1 (talk) 06:34, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * We don't break out regional airlines. Numbers given include mainline and regional totals. It would be confusing; if you break it down by brand (Delta Connection, American Eagle, Aeromexico Connect, etc) that would include multiple operators (e.g. Republic Airline, Mesa Airlines, etc). If you break it down by operator (e.g. SkyWest), that would include numbers from American, United, Delta, and Alaska. While some regionals operate strictly for one operator (e.g. Air Wisconsin for United, Horizon for Alaska) this isn't universally the case. As for Sunwing, Porter, etc., if you have reliable data, feel free to add. Usually data for privately-held airlines is hard to get. For Frontier and Sun Country, we use data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (from US Department of Transportation), but I am not aware of similar resources from Mexico and Canada.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 16:53, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * SkyWest should be removed from at least the "By Number of Destinations" list. They are a regional subcontractor and all flights are flown for Alaska, American, Delta, or United.  You can not buy a ticket on SkyWest only a partner airline express flight operated by SkyWest.  They're also the only regional subcontract airline in this list, whereas most of the larger regionals are listed in the "By Fleet Size" list. 74.83.251.102 (talk) 18:07, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem isn’t so much that SkyWest destinations are listed (I have no reason to question the veracity of the listing)… It’s that we have no way of removing destinations from the mainline. There are a lot of cities that SkyWest flies to on behalf of a mainline partner that the carrier does not otherwise fly to. That said I do think it is good to list SkyWest, as it just shows how large of an airline it is, despite the fact that it mostly flies under other brands. RickyCourtney (talk) 19:23, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Fleet size
The article given as reference for fleet size numbers explicitly state that the numbers do not include regional partner fleets, yet the footnote to the main table says "Includes regional partner flights". Can someone correct this?Avman89 (talk) 14:00, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there an accepted benchmark to use? For instance, https://www.planespotters.net/ has different counts (in service, in service + future, etc.). mggabin (talk) 17:46, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Regional
Page missing Canadian and Mexican regional carriers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.81.122.133 (talk) 19:28, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * If you've got the data, feel free to add them. oknazevad (talk) 20:00, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Virgin America
Should the Virgin America entry be removed, or are we waiting for April 25, 2018, when all flights are rebranded as Alaska Airlines? Currently the table counts VX passengers twice, toward both AS and VX's totals.Avman89 (talk) 22:35, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Data for smaller carriers
Should we remove the entries for Air Transat, Sunwing, and VivaAerobus, since there is almost no information about them?Mirza Ahmed (talk) 19:37, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Um, Viva Aerobus is pretty well filled out. Not so sure about the others. I can see removing since we don't have enough info to make an accurate ranking, though. oknazevad (talk) 20:49, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant Interjet.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 22:02, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

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What happened?
Who edited the entire table and took out airlines such as interjet, among others? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.81.122.243 (talk) 17:25, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Please see two sections up. With no significant data and no sources, there was nothing validly verifiable to include. oknazevad (talk) 22:18, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Regional Airlines
Should we take out the regional airlines table? There is hardly any data, except for SkyWest. All of SkyWest's passengers are already included in the mainline carriers' table (the numbers there include American Eagle, Delta Connection, United Express, and Alaska SkyWest).

If we can find data for regionals that don't fly feeder routes for the majors, e.g. Great Lakes, Silver, Porter, and Ravn Alaska, they should be included. Otherwise the table is pointless.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 23:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Time to drop the 2008–2012 table?
After all, the oldest data in it is ten years old, and many of the airlines aren't even in existence anymore, having merged into others. On one hand, that makes it an interesting historical record for comparison purposes. On the other hand, it's a trivial curiosity of limited interest, and of low relevance to the current market. It's not a list of all time largest airlines. A five-year rolling record to show trends is useful, but there's a limit to that usefulness, and data that old is not particularly useful anymore. Thoughts? oknazevad (talk) 14:06, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we should keep the last ten years' data. At the end of this year, I would add a 2018 column, move the 2013 column from the main table to the old table, and delete the 2008 data. The data is still of interest for anyone curious about the effect of the recession on various airlines, or the size of the participants in various mergers.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 18:10, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * True. Just wanted to note that the reason the current break is at the 2012 mark is that was he last year to have a separate US Airways line, not becaus edit happened to split the chart nicely in half. That came later with the addition of more recent years. We probably could ditch the last two entries in the old table too, as there's really no data there to justify having entries. oknazevad (talk) 20:54, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You can remove them if you want. It might also make sense to wait until 2020 and then remove Continental, Northwest, AirTran, Mexicana, and Midwest all together.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 21:01, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

SkyWest
Why do people keep adding SkyWest? SkyWest isn't an airline that carries their own passengers; they only operate regional flights for American, United, Delta, and Alaska. The regional numbers are already included in those airlines' figures. If we were to break out mainline and regional, there would have to be a dozen more "airlines" listed, most with no data.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 17:22, 12 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I think part of the reason for this is that the article was previously unclear as to what numbers were shown in the table for mainline airlines in NA. I've added wording to clarify this point per Sections 4 and 14 on this talk page. Hope it helps. N8 22:51, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Missing airlines
We're missing a couple airlines here. We're are missing Air Transat, Porter Airlines, Sunwing Airlines; all airlines of Canada. We are also missing Aeromar, a Mexican airline. AdamT777 (talk) 12:23, July 10 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, we know. It's hard to get data for privately-owned airlines, especially non-US ones (Frontier and Sun Country are privately-owned US airlines, but they are still required to report ridership data to the US DOT). If you have the data, feel free to add it.Mirza Ahmed (talk) 00:29, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Delta vs. AA
So according to the table, AA has 967 aicraft, while Delta has 979, but Delta is number 2? Weird math. 82.215.120.140 (talk) 20:55, 26 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The numbers were changed without an updated source. They've been reverted to the sourced numbers. oknazevad (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2024 (UTC)