Air traffic demand continued growth in February

The International Air Transport Association, IATA, has released its comparison of air traffic demand between February this year and 2009.  Passenger traffic had grown 9.5% while demand for cargo traffic was up 26.5%.

This is good news for the industry and is the second month in a row that demand has been on the increase.  It suggests improving health of the industry but the figures must be looked at in context.  For example, February 2009 was the worst affected month by the credit crisis, with passenger figures at an all time low. 

Cargo traffic levels reached their lowest point in the last month of 2008 but showed little improvement during the first quater of 2009, after significantly worse losses than the passenger sector.

Passenger transport demand is still 1.4% below pre-crisis levels according to IATA while cargo has 3% still to climb.  However these figures are significantly improved on those predicted by analysts in the latter half of last year. 

As reported by today's Los Angeles Times, these are positive signs that are showing the airline industry is beggining to recover.  The recovery is continuing gradually at present and Giovanni Bisignani, Director General of IATA, stated that "in two to three months, the industry should be back to pre-recession traffic levels."  Bisignani, however, remained cautious adding that "this is still not a full recovery".

February's figures shows the strongest growth in the Middle Eastern Region with traffic growth of 25.8%.  Europe suffered the weakest growth at 4.3%, amidst a backdrop of industrial unrest and strike action.

In their press release, IATA focussed on two key areas of dissapointment.  One of which was the labour issues in the European market.  Slow growth within the region is in line with predictions but walkouts are not helping the standing of the "fragile" industry. 

The second failure highlighted was the lack of progress on ownership issues in the open skies agreement between the EU and the US.  This caused frustration last week when no significant progress was seen to be made at the second round of talks.

Source: IATA