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Air transport capacity available to bring passengers to a destination, commonly described using scheduled seats.
Save conceptIn tourism reporting, airlift means the air transport capacity connecting a destination with its visitor markets. It is commonly described through routes, flight frequencies and available seats. More airlift can make a destination easier to reach, but available seats are an opportunity for travel, not a count of visitors who have already arrived or spent money.
Capacity depends on how many flights operate and how many seats each aircraft offers. A new route can bring access to a different market; extra flights on an existing route increase frequency. Tourism businesses may plan rooms, staffing and marketing around that capacity. Airlines can change schedules, however, and tickets must still be sold for available seats to become passengers.
Suppose an airline plans five weekly flights to Jamaica, each with 180 seats, over a 12-week period. That creates 5 × 180 × 12 = 10,800 scheduled inbound seats. At a hypothetical 80% seat , those flights carry 8,640 inbound passenger trips. Some passengers could be residents returning home, and some visitors may make repeat trips; neither number is automatically the number of foreign tourists.
Airlift differs from , which measure visitors recorded at the destination, and from hotel , which measures accommodation use. An announcement of scheduled seats is also different from realised capacity after cancellations or aircraft changes. Check the direction of travel, date range and whether the report counts seats, flights or actual passengers.
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