Only small shifts among biggest airlines

The world's biggest airlines can all keep their bragging rights for another year, despite small shifts in their ranking. In fact, the most interesting news among them is a statistical difference in how 'biggest' is measured.

American Airlines is the biggest, whether measured by number of passengers carried or by 'passenger miles,' an industry measure that multiplies the number of passengers by how far they are carried. After that, the picture starts to shift. For instance, in passenger miles, United slid into the #2 spot last year, edging out Delta, which nonetheless carried more passengers.

The disparity gets bigger faster. In passenger miles, Lufthansa tops Europe, beating out AirFrance/KLM for the first time—but in passengers carried, it's #10 in the world and #3 in Europe (or #4 if you include Turkey in Europe.) But the champion European passenger carrier is Ryanair, which carried nearly twice as many passengers as Lufthansa, but generally over shorter distances. EasyJet is Europe's #2 in passenger count.

China's many airlines tend to place lower in passenger miles because there are a relatively large number of airlines splitting the business and many shorter domestic flights. But in passenger count, China Southern and China Eastern shoot up to #6 and #7.

Here are the top 10 in passenger count:

In passenger miles, the tops are American, United, Delta, Lufthansa Group (including Swiss, Austrian, Brussels and Eurowings) AirFrance/KLM and IAG (including British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus.)