IATA: Industry has taken “a turn for the worseâ€
GENEVA – IATA has announced passenger traffic for March but says the figures don’t tell the whole story.
Compared to the same month in the previous year, passenger demand increased 5.8 per cent with load factors at 77.7 per cent.
IATA noted that March passenger growth was positively skewed by the Easter holiday period which was in April of the previous year.
“Adjusting for this distortion, real traffic growth in March was four per cent.”
The slowdown in demand growth continues the sharp downward trend which began in December 2007 as the impact of the US credit crunch began to be felt in the airline industry, IATA said.
“International passenger load factors were equally skewed. When adjusted to take into account artificially high utilisation over the Easter period, the March load factor was 76.1 per cent.
“While still high, this is 1.7 percentage points lower than the 77.8 per cent recorded for the same month in 2007.”
IATA said the fall indicated that the slowing of demand occurred faster than airlines could cut capacity.
“Traffic only tells a part of the story. Astronomical oil prices are hitting hard. And the buffer of an expanding economy has disappeared. The fortunes of the industry have taken a major turn for the worse,”said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general and CEO.
“The slowdown in Asia-Pacific carrier traffic to 4.3 per cent is significant in that the region’s booming economies were expected to immunise them from the US slowdown,” he added.
Ian Jarrett
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