Air passenger traffic recovers to reach six month high

Geneva, Jan 5 (UNI) The International Air Transport Association (IATA) today released its November traffic results that showed year-on-year international passenger traffic growth recovered to 6.7 per cent, the highest growth rate recorded since May.

International freight traffic growth for the same period remained sluggish at 3.1 per cent. Year to date, passenger traffic is up by 5.8 per cent and freight traffic by 4.8 per cent. The average passenger load factor remained strong at 73.9 per cent in November and is at 76.1 per cent year-to-date.

''While year-to-date traffic growth is slower than the buoyant rates seen in 2004 and 2005, it is in line with the long term industry average growth rate and has been a key factor behind the industry's improving bottom line,'' said IATA's director general and CEO Giovanni Bisignani.

West Asia remains the fastest growing region, posting an increase of 18.3 per cent in passenger traffic in November. However, for the second consecutive month the rise in capacity (20 per cent) outstripped demand in that region.

Africa recorded a 7.5 per cent increase followed by North America (7 per cent), Europe (6.1 per cent), Asia Pacific (5.6 per cent) and Latin America (minus 2.4 per cent).

International freight traffic in West Asia rose sharply (17.3 per cent) followed by Africa (3.9 per cent). Asia Pacific (3.2 per cent) and Europe (1.4 per cent) posted relatively low growth rates despite the improvement in underlying economic factors.

''A positive revenue environment helped the industry reduce losses to just half a billion dollars in 2006,'' said Mr Bisignani.

''We expect traffic growth to slow in 2007. Airlines must continue to keep load factors high by carefully managing capacity and by finding further efficiency gains to achieve the 2.5 billion dollar industry profit that we are projecting for 2007.'' IATA will release 2006 year-end traffic results on January 29.

UNI