The Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today released U.S. airlines’ October fuel cost and consumption numbers indicating U.S. scheduled service airlines used 1.433 billion gallons of fuel, 2.3% more fuel than in September 2022 (1.401 billion gallons) and 7.0% less than in pre-pandemic October 2019. The cost per gallon of fuel in October 2022 ($3.45) was down 4 cents (1.2%) from September 2022 ($3.49) and up $1.48 (75.1%) from October 2019. Total October 2022 fuel expenditure ($4.95B) was up 1.2% from September 2022 ($4.89B) and up 62.9% from pre-pandemic October 2019.

Year-over-year increases in fuel consumption and cost for October include 5.6% in domestic fuel consumption, 64.2% in domestic fuel cost, and 55.5% in cost per gallon.  Domestic fuel consumption increased 3.6% from September to October in 2022, while also decreasing 5.2% from October 2019.  Increased fuel consumption reflects an increase in airline passenger travel over the same period.

 

Fuel consumed by U.S. airlines (total) scheduled service:

October 2019:            1.54 billion gallons

October 2021:            1.28 billion gallons

September 2022:       1.40 billion gallons

October 2022:            1.43 billion gallons

Line Graph of US airline fuel cost per gallon. A general increase trend from April 2020 to July 2022 with a decrease from July 2022 to October 2022.

Fuel cost per gallon for U.S. airlines (total) scheduled service:

October 2019:            $1.97

October 2021:            $2.23

September 2022:       $3.49

October 2022:            $3.45

Total fuel cost for U.S. airlines (total) scheduled service:

October 2019:           $3.04 billion

October 2021:           $2.85 billion

September 2022:      $4.89 billion

October 2022:           $4.95 billion

Fuel Cost and Consumption data from January 2000 to the present can be found at https://transtats.bts.gov/fuel.asp. Summaries by month are also available.

Airline fuel costs may be affected by hedging, contracts that allow airlines to limit exposure to future price changes. 

Individual airline numbers through June 2022 are available on the BTS website. 

Original source can be found here.