Airport Operations
About the measures
The available seat miles tracked by the total number of available seat miles offered on scheduled service nonstop flights from airports in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and in Greater Minnesota in a 12-month period. As defined by the United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics, one available seat is one aircraft seat flown one mile. The average aircraft delay is estimated by the Federal Aircraft Administration (FAA) and measures the average delay in minutes for the top 20 large hub airports.
Recent trends
In 2022, there were 19.6 billion available seat miles offered from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) and 131,631 available seat miles offered from airports in Greater Minnesota. These figures show an increase and stabilization in available seat miles following the decrease in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For average aircraft delay at MSP, the average annual delay was 4.4 minutes in 2021, which was increase from 2020 but still less than the delays between 2016 and 2019.
Where we want to go
Air transportation is one of the many modes in Minnesota that connects people within and beyond the state boundaries. While MnDOT does not have direct influence on available seat miles, ensuring seat availability on scheduled service nonstop flights from Minneapolis-St. Paul airport and Greater Minnesota airports is an important indicator of how economically competitive the state is nationally and globally. This measure is primarily driven by the activities of individual air carriers and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. The Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) operations staff works with the airlines to safely respond to changing conditions (e.g., congestion, weather, operations incidents) that may impact available seat miles.