Southwest becomes the world’s largest airline in passenger count

Transportation Department statistics for the first five months of 2007 indicate that Southwest Airlines has surpassed American as the world’s largest carrier, in terms of passengers carried. Southwest, which has only domestic routes, carried 40.3 million flyers from January through May, DOT said, while American had a total of 40 million system-wide, including domestic and international flights. Southwest’s passenger traffic grew by 4.2 percent over January-May of 2006, while American’s declined 1.8 percent. Also among the top five airlines in passenger numbers were, in order, Delta, United and Northwest. DOT said overall U.S. airline passenger traffic from January to May increased 1.8 percent from the same period in 2006.