July takes top spot for number of Delta Air Lines’ customers flown

Any way you slice it, July has been a busy month for Delta Air Lines.

The airline flew more people in a single month than it ever has in its history and on July 20, a total of 6,087 Delta mainline and Delta Connection flights departed to destinations around the world — the most scheduled this year.

For the month, Delta flew nearly 18.3 million customers, more than half a million more than the previous record of 17.7 million set in June of this year. Looking back at Delta’s 89-year history, of the top 10 busiest days by customers carried, eight of them occurred in July in which Delta people handily flew in excess of 640,000 customers — that’s like flying the population of Portland, Ore. each of those days.

Passenger boarding peaked at nearly 662,000 on July 26 — the highest single-day record for the airline.

Meanwhile, and despite the high customer volumes, Delta saw a 99.31 percent completion factor for July across its mainline and Delta Connection system — a near record.

“Our employees are obsessed with serving our customers and providing a safe and reliable operation across our global system,” said Gil West, Delta’s Chief Operating Officer. “Month after month, Delta has been shattering records while still delivering on our promise to be the best airline for the hundreds of millions of customers we fly each year.”

​Delta Air Lines, Inc., commonly referred to as Delta, is a major United States airline, with its headquarters and largest hub at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline, along with its subsidiaries and regional affiliates, operates over 5,400 flights daily and serves an extensive domestic and international network that includes 319 destinations in 54 countries on six continents, as of October 2016. Delta is one of the four founding members of the SkyTeam airline alliance, and operates joint ventures with AeroMexico, Air France-KLM, Alitalia, Korean Air, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia, and WestJet. Regional service is operated under the brand name Delta Connection.