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Thai Lion Air comes out on top of world's fastest growing airlines

The world’s fastest growing airlines in 2018 have been revealed, with a Thai low cost carrier coming out on top.

The research, compiled by Routesonline, said Thai Lion Air had grown its seat capacity faster than any other airline in the world after increasing its fleet and adding new destinations to its network.

To find the list of the top 100 major airlines, the route information provider used flight data from OAG to judge capacity for 2018 compared to 2017. All of the top 100 airlines had more than 1 million available seats every month during 2018, Routesonline said.

Thai Lion Air – an associate company of Indonesia Lion Air, the airline responsible for last year’s worst air disaster – grew its capacity by 40.7 per cent in 2018, carrying more than 13.5 million passengers during the year. It was ranked the fastest growing airline of last year.

In second place was Vietjet, Vietnam’s second-largest airline, which grew capacity by 27.1 per cent with more than 20 million passengers.

UK carrier Jet2, which carried more than 13 million passengers last year, had a capacity spike of 26.7 per cent in 2018, putting it in third place. According to OAG data, Jet2 is now the fifth largest airline in the UK, with its biggest routes Manchester to Alicante, Palma de Mallorca and Tenerife South.

Making up the rest of the top 10 was India’s Go Air and IndiGo; Shanghai’s Spring Airlines; Alaska Airlines; Citilink Indonesia; Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary Eurowings; and US carrier Frontier Airlines.

The top 10 fastest growing airlines

1. Thai Lion Air. 2018 capacity: 13,577,267 (40.7%)

2. Vietjet. 2018 capacity: 20,641,372 (27.1%)

3. Jet2. 2018 capacity: 13,573,868 (26.7%)

4. Go Air. 2018 capacity: 14,720,400 (24.7%)

5. IndiGo. 2018 capacity: 74,570,054 (24.3%)

6. Spring Airlines. 2018 capacity: 22,518,540 (21.5%)

7. Alaska Airlines. 2018 capacity: 54,574,295 (20.9%)

8. Citilink Indonesia. 2018 capacity: 18,255,600 (20.3%)

9. Eurowings. 2018 capacity: 36,731,238 (18.5%)

10. Frontier Airlines. 2018 capacity: 23,412,340 (18.1%)