Asia leads global air traffic growth
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The Asia Pacific and Middle East regions continued to drive the growth of global air traffic in October 2015.
According to the latest monthly data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), international passenger demand in the Asia Pacific region rose 8.6% in October, while traffic on Middle Eastern carriers jumped 10.3%. This outpaced the global average growth of 7.5%.
And IATA’s director-general & CEO, Tony Tyler, said the global outlook for the air travel industry remained largely positive.
“The air travel story is generally a good one,” Tyler said. “In most parts of the world we see strong demand for travel – exceeding the growth in capacity. Load factors are averaging over 80% and consumers are the big winners with fares trending downwards.”
In terms of Asia Pacific’s international traffic, IATA noted that “significant declines in trade activity to [and] from emerging Asia and slower than expected growth in the Chinese economy do not appear to be impacting on passenger demand”. International seat capacity on Asia Pacific’s airlines rose 6.6% in October, while average load factors climbed 1.5 percentage points to 76.7%. However this is below the global average of 80.5%.
In the Middle East, a 12.7% expansion of seat capacity caused load factors to slide 1.5 percentage points to 72.5%.
In other regions, North American traffic climbed 4.6%, while European airlines saw demand rise 6.7%. Both regions recorded average load factors in excess of 82%. Latin American traffic rose 10.0% and demand in Africa was up 6.7%.
And Asia’s emerging markets continue to lead the way in terms of domestic traffic growth. India’s domestic passenger demand surged 17.6% in October, while Chinese traffic was up 12.8%. This compares with 6.9% growth in the US and a 6.0% decline in Brazilian traffic.
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