International travel patterns: exploring destination preferences and airfare trends to and from the USA
Abstract
Approximately one quarter of all U.S. air-passenger trips (involving US airlines only) are to and from foreign destinations, which accounted for around 4.5% of total US person-miles in 2019. Travel demand modeling and US travel surveys often overlook this overseas travel. Therefore, this study assesses travel demand, patterns, and costs (in time and money) between major US and foreign airports worldwide, as well as ground trips to Mexico and Canada, using 2019 DB1B flight ticket data, the 2016–2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), and border crossing data. A model of trip distribution, from 334 US airports to 1, 028 foreign airports, shows how trip flows fall by about 41% with every 7-hour increase in flight start-to-end time. Destinations hosting tourist attractions (e.g, London, Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Dubai) are also a practically significant variable in the model, increasing flows by 48%. Flight fares (for one-way itineraries) increase by $0.078 per mile for coach class and $0.163 per mile for business class and higher, according to feasible generalized least-squares models. These fares are higher for English-speaking destinations than non-English-speaking destinations, as well as for trips from April to June (as compared to January to March with similar distances and seating types).