Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport is handling barely half the freight volumes of a few years ago, as the economic crisis accelerates Taiwan’s decline as a manufacturing exporter. In January, only 72,213 metric tons passed through the airport, which averaged 142,000 tons a month in 2005. The lunar new year holiday in late January contributed to the fall, but monthly throughput has been well below 100,000 tons in recent months.

The Thai government is endorsing a Thai Airways restructuring plan that it demanded as a condition on further financial support for the carrier. The airline, often criticized for chronic overstaffing, is suggesting how it could improve its operating performance — for example, by cutting costs — in anticipation of replenishing its capital. Direct finance from the state or indirect support through loan guarantees look inevitable, because it would be unthinkable for Thailand to let the airline fail.

The Asian airline industry faces a risk of bankruptcies and an accelerated shift to the low-cost model after the global slowdown’s savage arrival in the region. Asian carriers that seemed largely sheltered from the Western economic storm for most of last year now find themselves battling a typhoon. A succession of statistics confirms that Asian air traffic is shrinking much faster than that of North America and Europe. And the contractions are becoming steadily more severe.