U.S. Airline Web Traffic Grew 25% in January, Led By 45% Growth at Frontier, 42% Gain at United Airlines

Key takeaways

• Aggregated web traffic to the ten largest U.S. airlines grew 25% in January, year over year.
• Frontier led the way with 45% web traffic growth, followed by 41% at United. All ten U.S. airlines saw web traffic growth on a year-over-year basis.
• Southwest.com leads in share of traffic with 23% share, followed by American at 19%, Delta at 17% and United at 16%. United gained two points of share over peers in January, year over year, while American Airlines saw its share of traffic dip by nearly two percentage points.

Similarweb’s monthly market share report shows changes in web traffic and share of traffic among nine U.S. airlines.

January web traffic growth indicative of strong underlying demand

A look at web traffic for the month of January to the ten largest U.S. airlines shows the year got off to a strong start. All ten peers saw growth, led by 45% growth at Frontier and 42% growth at United. In aggregate, all ten peers saw growth of 25%, a sign that last year’s strength in air travel demand has continued into the start of 2023.

United gained market share at the expense of American, Frontier also saw gains

Using web traffic as a proxy for market share, you can see that United gained share in the month of January, rising by 2.0 percentage points, while American lost 1.9 points of share. Frontier, which saw the most growth in its web traffic also gained share, seeing its overall market share grow by 700 basis points.,

Southwest leads U.S. carriers in share of traffic, followed by American

Southwest Airlines remains the largest U.S. airline in terms of share of web traffic, with a 23% share among the ten peers we looked at in this report. American was second, at 19%, followed by Delta (17%) and United.com (16%). There was a large lag between these four major airlines and the next largest peer, JetBlue, which had a 6% share of traffic, followed by Frontier (5%), Spirit (5%), Alaska (5%), Allegiant (3%), and Hawaiian (1%).

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Report By: Jim Corridore, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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by Jim Corridore

Senior Analyst

Jim provides insights across multiple sectors. With 30 years on Wall Street and numerous awards for stock-picking, he is a SUNY Albany graduate.