Air Travel by Puerto Ricans

During the Spanish-American war, US forces invaded and occupied Puerto Rico.  For the next five decades, the USA ruled Puerto Rico as a colonial protectorate, despite continued calls for autonomy.  In 1951, Puerto Ricans voted three to one in a referendum to become a commonwealth of the United States rather than remain a colony.  In the 1950's and 1960's, around one million Puerto Ricans went to work in New York City and elsewhere in the United States.  Return migration to Puerto Rico increased during the 1970s and '80s.  US citizenship has helped facilitate a type of circular migration that has led some intellectual types to label Puerto Rico the 'commuter nation.'

Since Puerto Rico is just hours away from mainland USA by air (note: less than four hours between New York City and San Juan),  it is easy to go back and forth.  Given that the close historical relationship, we expect that there would be quite a bit of travel.  We will now cite some survey data from the TGI Puerto Rico study.  This is a survey of 7,352 persons between the ages of 12 and older, who were interviewed during 2001 and 2003 in Puerto Rico.  Within this sample, 18% said that they had traveled by airplane during the past 12 months.

The next chart shows the destinations named by the travelers.  Since it is possible to have gone to more than one region, these numbers add up to more than 100%.  Clearly, the USA is the most popular destination for Puerto Ricans, by far.

(source: TGI Puerto Rico)

The next chart shows the incidence of air travel by age/sex groups.  The notable falloff occurs after retirement age (65 and over).  Otherwise, it is not as if some age group travels appreciably different from others.

(source: TGI Puerto Rico)

Although a round-trip airplane ticket may cost as little as a couple of hundred US dollars these days, there are ancillary costs.  These include transportation to and from airports as well as lodging.  This injects an economic component into the travel decision.  In the next chart, we show the incidence of air travel by household income and educational levels.  The incidences are monotonically increasing functions of household income and educational levels.

(source: TGI Puerto Rico)

Actually, we would think that travel would be affected even more by the extent of family ties.  For example, if one has an extended family on the other side with whom one can stay during the frequent visits, or to attend family functions (such as weddings or birthday celebrations).  Or else one may have work connections on the other side.  Unfortunately, the TGI Puerto Rico does not have these types of data, which would have been elusive to ask anyway.

Instead, we can shift our attention to a narrower aspect.  Notwithstanding the existence of a large Hispanic population in the United States, the traveler will still be going to a country where the principal language is English.  It is a lot easier to get around if the traveler has some familiarity with English.  In turn, fluency in English will probably come by due to prior education, or previous stays in the United States or a circle of English-speaking relatives and friends.  In the next chart, we show the incidence of traveling by the language spoken at home.  Clearly, the travel incidence increases with English-speaking preferences.

(source: TGI Puerto Rico)

Commercially, this is obviously a large traveling population.  We note that the TGI Puerto Rico study measures only those who are residing in Puerto Rico at the time of the survey, and does not measure the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States and we imagine that an even larger number of people would be traveling in the other direction.  For airlines, an interesting question is which factors are important to these travelers when it comes to choosing an airline.  The next chart shows the stated preferences.  Noting that this is a fairly short flight, price is the most important factor named by most travelers.  What is surprising is how little frequent flyer programs count in the decision.

(source: TGI Puerto Rico)

(posted by Roland Soong, 7/07/2003)