IATA Reports More Growth in International Air Passenger Numbers

April airline passenger numbers belied the gloomy world economic outlook, according to the latest International Air Transport Association (IATA) global air traffic results. Passenger demand rose 6.1 percent.

Despite economic weakness in major parts of the world, air travel keeps growing. The 6.1 percent growth recorded for April is above the 20-year trend, according to IATA. Strong demand for air travel with limited capacity expansion pushed load factors to 79.3 percent, which is a record high for an April load factor.

Of course, IATA’s report wasn’t all good news. Air freight, a major leading indicator, was down 4.2 percent compared to last April. However, that was somewhat misleading because air freight markets slumped sharply in the first half of 2011 and bottomed out towards the end of the year.

Various distortions and month-to-month volatility have marked the industry performance since the beginning of 2012. However, April cargo levels stood at about 2 percent higher than in November 2011. About 80 percent of this improvement has been captured by Middle Eastern airlines. Air freight for the Asia-Pacific, European and North American carriers has continued to show weakness.

According to IATA, international air travel rose 7.4 percent in April compared to the year-ago period, outstripping a capacity expansion of 4.3 percent. April load factors stood at 79.1 percent, up 2.3 percentage points from April 2011. European airlines recorded passenger demand growth of 5.9 percent. This is below the 7.4 percent global average and is significantly lower than the 8.7 percent growth recorded in March.

On the other hand, demand was stronger than the 3.4 percent capacity expansion, which pushed load factors to 80.7 percent. While this is a relatively strong performance compared to previous-year levels, since the beginning of the year there has been a declining trend. April, for example, saw traffic contract by 0.3 percent compared to March, despite the Easter holiday period being in mid-April.

North American airlines saw passenger demand expand by 1.6 percent in April compared to the previous year. This is the weakest demand growth among all regions and represents a weakening from the 5.3 percent year-over-year growth recorded in March. But the trend in North American travel is still positive since the end of 2011, as U.S. economic conditions and particularly consumer confidence has improved. North American carriers were also the ones to cut capacity (by an almost equal 1.5 percent). This allowed the region’s carriers to post the strongest load factor at 80.8 percent.

Latin American carriers experienced a 9 percent expansion in international demand in April compared to the same month in 2011. Despite some potential for economic slowdown, growth has been solid enough in the region’s economies to sustain strong demand for passenger travel.

This outpaced the capacity expansion of 5.3 percent and bucked expectations of a slowdown in the region due to weakening economic conditions. Load factors stood at 78.6 percent. Finally, African airlines reported a 7 percent increase in demand. Africa was the only region where capacity expansion (8.5 percent) outpaced demand growth, but load factors were the weakest at 65.9 percent.

http://www.travelpulse.com/iata-reports-more-growth-in-international-air-passenger-numbers.html