Air travel growth slowing down

MANILA, Philippines—The global air travel sector should expect darker clouds ahead with the effects of the global crises starting to impact on demand, leading to a decline in volumes led by the Asia-Pacific region.

In a statement, the International Air Travel Association (IATA) said that although airlines around the world were still reporting profits, the industry remained vulnerable to shocks that might be caused by rising oil prices.

“The profile of the recovery in air transport sharply decelerated in March. The global industry lost 2 percentage points of demand as a result of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena),” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA director general and CEO, in the statement.

The recent events in Japan resulted in a 1-percent loss in international traffic in March. Japan’s domestic market was the most severely affected with a 22-percent fall in demand during the month.

Looked at regionally, the IATA said Asia-Pacific carriers saw a traffic loss of more than 2 percent; North American carriers, 1 percent; and Europe’s carriers, 0.5 percent.

Asia-Pacific carriers saw the broadest negative turn of fortunes in March, the global industry group said.

“Compared to February, demand (in March) contracted by 2.2 percent while 0.8 percent was added to capacity,” IATA said.

This led to a sharp 2.3-percentage point fall in load factors, the measure of how filled-up flights are on the average, to 74.2 percent in March.

“The second quarter is likely to see continued depressed air travel markets due to the events in Japan and Mena,” Bisignani said.

“The fragility of the situation is demonstrated by the considerably weaker 3.3 percent year-on-year growth in economy class travel in February,” he added.

There was a nearly across-the-board drop in demand for travel for the month. European traffic growth slowed to 5.3 percent year on year from 7.4 percent the month before.—Paolo G. Montecillo