From the blog

#iata

4 articles tagged #iata.

A chart showing demand dipping while load factor holds at a record, with regional divergence bars, in Active Flights brand blue on near-black.
Industry & Markets·

Softer demand, fuller planes: reading IATA's mid-2026 numbers

In May 2026 global air travel demand actually fell year-on-year — yet load factors hit a record for the month. That apparent contradiction says a lot about how tight, and how regional, the 2026 network has become.

#iata#demand#load-factor#2026
Aircraft type codes shown in both IATA three-character and ICAO four-character forms mapping to the same aircraft, in Active Flights brand amber on near-black.
SSIM & Schedules·

Reading aircraft type codes: IATA vs ICAO in the schedule

The 'equipment' field in a schedule is a short code for an aircraft type — and there are two competing code systems for it. Knowing which is which, and mapping between them, is a small skill that prevents big mistakes.

#ssim#equipment-codes#aircraft-types#iata
Schedule-change action-code chips — NEW, CNL, TIM, EQT — flowing from a schedule to downstream systems, in Active Flights brand blue on near-black.
SSIM & Schedules·

SSM and ASM: how schedule changes actually travel

A schedule is published once, then changed constantly. SSM and ASM are the IATA messages that carry those changes — bulk and ad-hoc — with action codes like NEW, CNL, TIM and EQT. Here's how they work.

#ssim#ssm-asm#schedule-messaging#iata
A raw fixed-width SSIM record line decoding into labelled structured fields, in Active Flights brand cyan on near-black.
SSIM & Schedules·

What is IATA SSIM? A plain-English guide to the format that runs airline schedules

SSIM is how the airline industry exchanges its schedules — a fixed-width, 200-byte text format that's deceptively simple and genuinely hard to get right. Here's what it is and why it matters.

#ssim#iata#schedule-data#explainer