IATA figures show Middle East traffic drop heads global industry fall

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced scheduled international traffic results for March 2011 showing that year-on-year growth in passenger demand had slowed to 3.8% from the 5.8% recorded in February. Conversely, year-on-year growth in freight markets rebounded to 3.7% in March from the 1.8% recorded in February.

Middle East carriers saw year-on-year demand growth fall from 8.3% in February to 5.6% in March. Compared to the previous month (February) demand was up by 0.1% while capacity expanded by 0.8%. This pushed the load factor down 0.6 percentage points to 73.2%.

African carriers saw demand fall 7.0% compared to the previous March. This is an improvement from the 9.7% drop recorded in February. Compared to the previous month, the region saw demand expand by 6.5% against an increase in capacity of 6.2%. Load factors improved by 0.2 percentage points to 62.7%. This is sharply below the industry average of 74.6%.

Globally, compared to February worldwide passenger demand fell by 0.3% in March, while cargo demand expanded by 4.5%.

“The profile of the recovery in air transport sharply decelerated in March. The global industry lost 2 percentage points of demand as a result of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA),” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

The disruptions in MENA cut international travel by 0.9 percentage points. Egypt and Tunisia experienced traffic levels 10-25% below normal for March. Military action in Libya virtually stopped civil aviation to, from and within that country.

Capacity adjustments lagged behind the sudden drop in demand. Against global demand growth of 3.8%, capacity expanded by 8.6%. The average load factor fell by 3.5 percentage points to 74.6%.