The typical air traveler is not at all who you think he is

There are a ton of clichés and preconceived ideas about people who fly and who they are. A recent study by France’s General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) dispels many clichés.

We won’t rehash the debate about who’s out to kill air travel for one reason or another, but let’s just say that it’s been criticized on two counts: for polluting enormously, and for being the rich man’s means of transport. Two arguments for slamming air travellers with a masterful art of demagogy.

Two common misconceptions about air travel

As for the first point, I refer you to a study carried out by the Pegase Chair in 2020: to name but two, the textile industry pollutes far more than air transport, while the IT sector was on a par at the time and has since overtaken it by a wide margin. The climate terrorist is not the person who takes the plane, but the fast-fashion enthusiast who binge-watches series on Netflix, especially if he or she has a car.

For the second, the DGAC carried out a study in 2016 which showed that the typical profile of the air passenger in France was quite different from the generally accepted ideas. It carried out the same exercise in 2023, and has now provided us with updated figures to see if things have changed.

Who is the typical air traveler?

So let’s go with the clichés. The typical air traveler is necessarily a middle-aged, high-income man. That’s the cliché you’ll hear repeated over and over in the media, but what’s the reality?

To begin with, the air traveler is not a male traveler, but a female traveler. 51% of flights to and from French airports are flown by women.

The average age is 39.4, but a closer look reveals that the three age groups who travel the most are 25/34 year-olds (27%), followed by 35/44 year-olds (19%) and 15/24 year-olds (18%). It’s important to note that since 2016 the population has been getting younger.

Well, he’s not exactly a wealthy person. The current average household income for travelers is 52,850 euros. We’re not talking about the traveller, but the household! 12% of passengers have a household income of between 30 and 50,000 euros (this is the income class that travels the most) and 18% have a household earning less than 30,000 euros a year.

Finally, only 43% of passengers are from the upper socio-professional classes, compared with 35% from the lower socio-professional classes and 25% from the economically inactive. Since 2016, the share of lower socio-professional categories has risen by 8 points.

It is also worth noting that 51% of passengers fly for leisure and 25% to visit friends. Business travel accounts for only 19% of trips. Another change since 2016, with a drop in business travel and an increase in leisure travel.

So we go from an older, high-income,upper class man traveling on business to a younger, lower-income, lower-middle-class woman. Not bad.

The traveler and the environment

A few years ago, another study by chair Pégase more or less told us that although the environmental issue was on the minds of the French, they were not very engaged. The same was true of young people who were full of good intentions but didn’t behave that way.

The DGAC report includes a section on this subject, so it’s worth taking a look.

83% of passengers have not given up a flight to improve their carbon footprint. And there’s nothing to say that the 17% who say they’ve done it aren’t just saying it because it feels good to say it.

On average, they flew 5.6 times during the year… we’ll let you judge whether that’s a little or a lot.

If no flight had ever been available, 47% would have left from another airport for the same destination, 13% from the same airport but for a different destination, only 16% would have considered another means of transport, and 9% would have given up their journey.

As for domestic flights, 59% have never considered a mode of transport other than air travel.

Do they want to reduce their travel over the next few years? Only 23% say yes! When study after study on the subject comes back with the same bottom line, you’d be tempted to say that promises only engage those who listen to them!

Bottom line

There’s what you hear, what people say and what you see. And this DGAC study seems to us totally consistent with what we see, contrary to what we hear.

We claim to spend enough time on airplanes to have an idea of who takes them, in France and elsewhere. And speaking only of young people, who are supposed to be more sensitive and, above all, more engaged than others on environmental issues, we’ve always been surprised to find a gap between what we’re told and planes full of young people eager to travel.

As for the profile of the typical air passenger in France, it speaks for itself. There’s an impressive gap between a discourse that stigmatizes air transport through a profile of passengers who people love to hate, even though they fly less, and those who point the finger at them.

We’d just like the media to point out these differences, based on the facts, instead of putting across a discourse that’s full of good conscience but totally untrue.

Image : air traveler by Yuganov Konstantin via Shutterstock

Bertrand Duperrin
Bertrand Duperrinhttp://www.duperrin.com
Compulsive traveler, present in the French #avgeek community since the late 2000s and passionate about (long) travel since his youth, Bertrand Duperrin co-founded Travel Guys with Olivier Delestre in March 2015.
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