EN
Recent years have witnessed a whole range of changes in the global economic system; the changes have largely resulted from crisis situations in global markets. Air transport is an element of the system that is very sensitive to any kinds of changes. Due to a difficult financial situation the sector is relatively quickly affected. The corporate representatives and individuals in situation of financial crisis can easily resign from air transportation, especially for short distance travel. The main purpose of the paper is to present changes in passenger’s air transport quantity in the largest airports of the world with respect to the selected air carriers. The first part of the article presents the size of passenger’s air transport in the airports with the highest number of passengers (Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, London Heathrow, Frankfurt International) in years 2007−2010, i.e. since the moment preceding the global trend of decrease in air transportation till now (in accordance with the current availability of statistic data). Next, the changes in passenger’s air transportation quantity for the selected air carriers operating in various parts of the world have been analyzed with respect to a comparable period of time. In the last part of the paper the authors tried to present the examples of the impact of crisis on particular air carriers as well as to discuss the attempts undertaken to restore the passenger’s transportation rates to the level preceding the crisis.