"July figures confirm that traffic is well on its way to recovery. Although we are
still below last year's levels, the improvement is impressive enough to suggest
that we will end the year 2.0% down on 2002 levels," said Giovanni
Bisignani, IATA's Director General and CEO.
Preliminary IATA traffic figures for July 2003 show a 3.6% drop in international
passenger traffic over July 2002. This is much improved over final traffic
figures for June that indicated a 12.4% decrease over June 2002. Greatest
improvement was seen with SARS-hit Asia Pacific carriers. Their traffic was
14.0% below July 2002 levels, an advance on the 32%% year-on-year drop recorded in June.
For the first seven months of the year, overall passenger traffic is 6.5% below
2002 levels.
North American, Asia Pacific and European carriers saw traffic drop 10.6%,
15.5% and 0.5% respectively. South American and Middle Eastern traffic for
January to July improved 8.6% and 7.5% for the same period.
Overall capacity fell by 4.1% leading to a July passenger load factor of 77.7%.
This figure compares favourably to the 73.0% recorded in June.
In the international freight market, overall traffic increased 1.4%, a similar
picture to June (+0.2%). This is well down on the double digit growth recorded
during the first quarter of 2003, suggesting that the 6.4% year-to-date growth
will reduce further as demand slows.
"While passenger traffic is clearly returning, we cannot ignore the influence of
the price incentives that airlines have offered to stimulate the market. The
strength of the recovery will become evident in the coming months as pricing
returns to more economic levels. An economically viable airline industry is
essential to the global economy. The industry's agenda of overall cost reduction combined with moving governments towards further liberalization
and a more realistic view on competition remains critical," cautioned
Bisignani. |