DEPARTING SEATS · LOCAL DEMAND · HOME VALUES2000–2025 · 130 AIRPORTS

THE RUNWAY
INDEX

Airlines are ruthless capital allocators: they add seats where a metro is growing and pull them where it isn't. Every seat flown out of America's airports for 26 years, hubs discounted to local demand — read as pixels.
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1,166M
US DEPARTING SEATS · 2025 · RECORD
HUB SEATS DISCOUNTED TO TRIPS THAT START LOCALLY — ATL BOARDS 2.5 PAX FOR EVERY LOCAL ONE
CHAPTER 01 / 03
THE COUNTRY
The whole system at once: national capacity through four shocks, the airports the airlines are betting on fastest, and how those bets line up with home prices on the ground.
PLATE 01 / 08 HOVER ANY YEAR TO SCRUB THE WHOLE PAGE
THE PULSE
Every seat flown out of America's airports, every passenger boarded, and how full the cabins ran — one pixel per year.
PLATE 02 / 08 SORT:
FINGERPRINTS
The ten fastest-growing airports in the country — anywhere with at least 200K seats in 2015 qualifies — one pixel per year, same scale. Toggle to the ten biggest. National shocks read as shared columns; everything else is the airlines' verdict on one city. Click a row to open its fingerprint.
PLATE 03 / 08
SEATS ROW HOMES ROW
THE CITY BET
Two strands per metro: the airlines' bet on top, the housing market underneath — both as year-over-year change. When the gold arrives before the terracotta, the airlines called it first.
CHAPTER 02 / 03
THE AIRPORT — SEA
One place at a time: where its seats go, how its capacity breathed across 26 years, which routes were born and died, and who operates the schedule. Click any airport, anywhere, to retarget this whole chapter.
PLATE 04 / 08 1×1 LOCAL · 2×2 MAJOR · 3×3 MEGA-HUB
THE NATIONAL GRID
Every airport on one raster, colored by that year's bet. SEA is selected — its routes travel the grid as dotted trails. Click any square; scrub the years to watch the country recolor.
2025
20002025
GRAMMAR — ■ BLACK FILL: ACTIVE CONTROL · ⌐ ¬ BRACKETS: SELECTED PLACE · · DOTTED TRAIL: ROUTE · FADED: UNRELATED TO SELECTION
PLATE 05 / 08 SELECTED ON PLATES 01 + 02
SEA

NEW SERVICE

CLIMBING · '15→'25

RETREATING

PLATE 06 / 08
YEAR-ROUND SEASONAL LAUNCHED RETURNED
ROUTE DNA — SEA
One pixel per year of service, from the airport's fifteen biggest routes. Routes appear, go seasonal, vanish, and sometimes come back — the network's history in a strand. Year-round means nine or more months of scheduled service.
PLATE 07 / 08
THE OPERATORS — SEA
Who owns the schedule, what they fly, and where the seats go. One strip per airline — cell depth is that year's share of seats. Click an operator to trace it in blue.
2025
SCRUB YEAR

OPERATOR ROSTER

CARRIERSHARELOADFLEET LEADERINTL

2025 SEAT ALLOCATION — 1 CELL ≈ 1% OF SEATS

FLEET MIX — ONE PIXEL PER YEAR

CABIN LOAD — SHARE OF SEATS FILLED, ONE PIXEL PER YEAR

AIRCRAFT TYPES — RISE & FALL · 2025

INTERNATIONAL SHARE

CHAPTER 03 / 03
THE AIRLINE — DELTA
One carrier across the whole country: its share of everything that flies, the metal it bet on, and the map of places it decided matter. The mergers are in here too — pick a dead airline and watch its final approach.
PLATE 08 / 08

NATIONAL FOOTPRINT — ONE PIXEL PER YEAR

FLEET MIX

THE NETWORK — AIRPORTS SIZED BY DELTA SEATS · 2025

TOP AIRPORTS · 2025

METHOD

Seats — scheduled passenger service, seats on flights departing each US airport, 2000–2025. Capacity actually flown, not schedules.

Hub adjustment — a hub's raw count reflects its airline's connecting bank, not local demand. Using a 10% ticket survey, each airport's local origin share is measured at five epochs and interpolated. Local demand = domestic seats × local share + international seats. St. Louis losing its TWA hub reads as the hub leaving (raw −58%) rather than the city collapsing (local −21%).

Home values — metro home-value index (smoothed, seasonally adjusted), June values.

Fleet & carriers — carrier and aircraft-type fields from the traffic data; regional jets, turboprops and widebodies classified from an aircraft-type register. The ticket survey samples domestic itineraries only; international seats count as fully local, which over-credits gateways like MIA. 2020–21 is a COVID cliff.

DATA API + EMBED KIT: RUNWAYINDEX.AI/API · TYPE: ARCHIVO / IBM PLEX MONO / VT323