1. Global air traffic 2025
🔴 Air traffic continues its steep ascent this year. In October, passenger traffic rose 6.6% year-over-year, while cargo traffic increased 4.1%, according to the latest monthly data from IATA.
The October figures are no aberration, as growth has persisted throughout the year. IATA reports that for the first ten months of 2025, passenger traffic grew 5.3% compared to the prior-year period, with air freight up 3.3%, despite headwinds from U.S. tariff policies and international crises.
Data from Flightradar24 confirm the increase in flight activity. Flight counts in recent days averaged 215,116 movements (all flight operations), representing an 8.5% increase over the previous year. Focusing solely on commercial flights, the figure stood at 127,172, which is a gain of 6.6%.
Source: Flightradar24
2. Jet fuel prices
Jet fuel prices are creating a favorable environment for airlines and their clients. At approximately $90 per barrel, they stand 9% below year-ago levels. The decline would have been considerably more pronounced had refineries not succeeded in significantly expanding their margins. BTW, this pattern applies to other petroleum products such as diesel and gasoline as well.
The following chart illustrates how crude oil and jet fuel prices diverged in the second half of the year (blue line and red line). The crack spread (refinery gross margin) rises accordingly (yellow bars).
Source: IATA
3. Jet fuel demand
🔴 IATA anticipates that jet fuel consumption will rise 4% this year, from 6.46 mb/d to 6.72 mb/d. However, IATA captures only commercial flights, excluding private jets, some other general aviation segments and military aircraft.
🔴 The IEA provides a broader perspective, projecting global consumption of “jet fuel and kerosene” at 7.71 mb/d this year—a 3% increase over last year. Growth rates from Platts and BNEF sources show similar values.
Here too, however, a caveat applies: the jet fuel and kerosene product group largely, but not entirely, corresponds to jet fuel consumption in aviation. Kerosene is also used for cooking and in limited quantities for heating in certain regions. Nevertheless, these markets are relatively small and shrinking rapidly. According to EIA data, these volumes stood at 621 kb/d in 2023. The share is expected to decline to 7% of total jet/kerosene volumes in 2025.
4. Aircraft efficiency and SAF – no “Peak Jet Fuel” in sight
🔴 While air traffic is growing faster than jet fuel consumption, efficiency gains from newer aircraft and improved management appear insufficient to achieve “peak jet fuel demand.” IATA estimates that consumption will decline from 4.2 liters per 100 passenger-kilometers in 2023 and 2024 to 4.1 liters this year.
With aircraft load factors remaining approximately constant, this corresponds to fuel efficiency improvements of only about 1% annually.
🔴 Low-carbon fuels (SAF, sustainable aviation fuels, consisting almost exclusively of drop-in biofuels) continue to play only a marginal role in aviation.
Their share is rising from 0.3% (1.0 million tonnes) last year to 0.6% (1.9 million tonnes) in 2025, according to IATA estimates. Next year could see 0.8% (2.4 million tonnes). More on this topic in an upcoming blog post.
The transition to less climate-damaging fuels could be more than offset by persistently high growth rates in global air traffic. Of the 7.7 mb/d in global jet fuel consumption, only 0.2 mb/d is attributable to India, 0.2 mb/d to all of Africa, 0.3 mb/d to Central and South America, and 0.9 mb/d to China.
🔴 BNEF and IEA therefore expect jet fuel demand to surge 50% to 11.4-11.6 mb/d by 2050, absent fundamental changes to current climate and transport policies.
Sources:
IATA: Global Outlook for Air Transport, December 2025
IATA: Air Passenger Market Analysis, November 2025
IATA: Air Cargo Market Analysis, November 2025
IEA: Oil 2025, Paris 2025
IEA: Oil Market Report December 2025, Paris 2025
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/statistics
Picture: BFL-Flux
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