Kevin Stein
President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director at TransDigm Group
Thanks Nick. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Nick for his counsel, support and mentorship over the last seven years. He has made the succession planning process a rewarding experience for both of us. I look forward to continuing our work together with this fantastic team as we embrace our modified rules. Now to the business of today, as I will first provide my regular review of results by key market and profitability of the business for the quarter; I'll also comment on recent acquisition and divestiture activity and outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2021.
Our current Q3 results have returned to positive growth as we are now lapping the first quarter of fiscal 2020 fully impacted by the pandemic. However, our results continue to be unfavorably impacted in comparison to pre-pandemic levels due to the reduced demand for air travel. On a positive note, the commercial aerospace industry has increasingly shown signs of recovery, with vaccination rates expanding and increased air traffic, especially in certain domestic markets. In our business, we saw another quarter of sequential improvement in commercial aftermarket revenues with total commercial aftermarket revenues up 6% over Q2.
Additionally, I am very pleased that we continue to sequentially expand our EBITDA As defined margin. Contributing to this increase is the continued recovery in our commercial aftermarket revenues as well as the careful management of our cost structure and focus on our operating strategy in this challenging commercial environment. Now, we will review our revenues by market category. For the remainder of the call, I will provide color commentary on a pro forma basis compared to the prior year period in 2020. That is assuming we own the same mix of businesses in both periods. This market discussion includes the acquisition of Cobham Aero Connectivity.
We began to include Cobham in this market analysis discussion in the second quarter of fiscal 2021. This market discussion also removes the impact of any divestitures completed by the end of Q3. In the commercial market, which typically makes up 65% of our revenue, we will split our discussion into OEM and aftermarket. Our total commercial OEM revenue increased approximately 1% in Q3 compared with Q3 of the prior year. Bookings in the quarter were very strong and solidly outpaced sales. Sequentially, both Q3 revenue and bookings improved approximately 10% compared to Q2. Although we expect demand for our commercial OEM products to continue to be reduced in the short term, we are encouraged by build rates gradually progressing at the commercial OEMs.
Recent commentary from Airbus and Boeing also included anticipated rate ramps for their narrow-body platforms in the near future. Hopefully, this will play out as forecasted. Now, moving on to our Commercial Aftermarket business discussion, total commercial aftermarket revenues increased by approximately 33% in Q3 when compared to prior year Q3. Growth in commercial aftermarket revenues was primarily driven by increased demand in our passenger submarket, although all of our commercial aftermarket submarkets were up significantly compared to prior year Q3.
Sequentially, total commercial aftermarket revenues grew approximately 6% in Q3. Commercial aftermarket bookings are up significantly this quarter compared to the same prior year period, and Q3 bookings continued to outpace sales. To touch on a few key points of consideration, global revenue passenger miles are still low but modestly improving each month. Though the timeline and pace of the recovery remains uncertain with expanded vaccine distribution and lifting of travel restrictions, passenger demand across the globe will increase as there is global pent-up demand for travel. The Delta variant of COVID and other future evolutions may further complicate this picture. Time will tell.
We see evidence of this demand through the recovery in domestic travel. Domestic air traffic increased each month during our fiscal Q3 and into July. Airlines also continued to see strength in bookings and strong demand for domestic travel, especially in the U.S. And Europe is also starting to pick up. China has now become a watch point however. The pace of the international air traffic recovery has been slow, and international revenue passenger miles have only slightly recovered. There is potential for international travel opening more as vaccinations increase and governments across the world start to revise travel restrictions.
Cargo demand has recovered quicker than commercial travel due to the loss of passenger belly cargo and the pickup in e-commerce. Global cargo volumes are now surpassing pre-COVID levels. Business jet utilization data has shown that activity in certain regions has rebounded to pre-pandemic or even better levels. This rebound is primarily due to personal and leisure travel as opposed to business travel. Time will tell if business travel -- or business jet utilization continues to expand, but current trends are encouraging. Now, let me speak about our defense market, which traditionally is at or below 35% of our total revenue.
The defense market revenue which includes both OEM and aftermarket revenues grew by approximately 12% in Q3 when compared with the prior year period. Our defense order book remains strong and we continue to expect our defense business to expand throughout the remainder of the year. No particular program was driving this uptick as the growth was well distributed across the business. Moving to profitability, I'm going to talk primarily about our operating performance or EBITDA As defined. EBITDA As defined of about $559 million for Q3 was up 32% versus prior Q3.
EBITDA As defined margin in the quarter was approximately 45.9%. We were able to sequentially improve our EBITDA As defined margin versus Q2. Next, I will provide a quick update on our recent acquisition and divestitures. The Cobham acquisition integration is progressing well. We have now owned Cobham a little over seven months and are pleased with the acquisition thus far. On the divestiture front, we closed the sales of Technical Airborne Components, ScioTeq and TREALITY during Q3. The divestiture of these three less proprietary and mostly defense businesses was previously discussed on our Q2 earnings call.
As a reminder, for the divestitures, the financial results of these businesses will remain in continuing operations for all periods they were under TransDigm ownership. Now moving to our outlook for 2021; we are still not in a position to issue formal guidance for the remainder of fiscal 2021. We will look to reinstitute guidance when we have a clearer picture of the future. We, like most aero suppliers, are hopeful that we will realize a more meaningful return of activity in this second half of the calendar year. We continue to be encouraged by the recovery we have seen in our commercial OEM and aftermarket bookings throughout the fiscal year, along with the continued improvement we have seen in our commercial aftermarket revenues.
As for the defense market and consistent with our commentary on the Q2 earnings call, we expect defense revenue growth in the mid single-digit percent range for fiscal 2021 versus prior year. Additionally, given the continued uncertainty in the commercial market channels and consistent with our past commentary, we are not providing an expected dollar range for fiscal 2021 EBITDA As defined. We assume another steady increase in commercial aftermarket revenue in this last quarter of our fiscal year and expect full year fiscal 2021 EBITDA margin roughly in the area of 44%, which could be higher or lower based on the rate of commercial aftermarket recovery.
This includes a dilutive effect to our EBITDA margin from Cobham Aero Connectivity. Mike will provide details on other fiscal '21 financial assumptions and updates. Let me conclude by stating that I'm pleased with the company's performance in this challenging time for the commercial aerospace industry and with our commitment to driving value for our stakeholders. The commercial aerospace market recovery continues to progress, and current trends are encouraging.
There is still uncertainty about the pace of recovery, but the team remains focused on controlling what we can control. We continue to closely monitor the ongoing developments in the commercial aerospace industry and are ready to meet the demand as it returns. We look forward to this final quarter of our fiscal 2021 and expect that our consistent strategy will continue to provide the value you have come to expect from us.
With that, I would now like to turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Lisman.
