Natural disasters in Japan and civil upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa prompted the growth in global passenger demand to slacken in March, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has revealed.
Year-on-year growth in the global number of passengers flying slowed from the 5.8% recorded in February to 3.8% last month.
Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s CEO, said: “The profile of the recovery in air transport sharply decelerated in March.”
He said the global industry lost two percentage points of demand as a direct result of the events.
Japan’s domestic market saw a 22% fall in demand, while Egypt and Tunisia experienced traffic levels that were between 10 and 25% lower than normal for March.
Asia Pacific carriers as a whole performed the most poorly of the regions. Demand for March was flat year-on-year, and compared to February it contracted by 2.2%.
In the Middle East, year-on-year demand growth for airlines fell from 8.3% in February to 5.6% in March. When compared to February, demand in March was up by 0.1%
Of the regions, Latin American carriers performed the strongest in March, with a 4.7% increase in demand compared to February, and a 22.2% increase compared to March 2010.
European airlines also saw demand levels in March rise, by 5.3% year-on-year, down from a 7.4% year-on-year growth seen for the month of February.
Airlines in North America, meanwhile,saw a 3.7% year-on-year improvement in demand for March, a 3 percentage point drop from the 6.7% growth recorded in February. Compared to the previous month, demand in March dropped 0.9%.
Overall, an increase in capacity failed to match the fall in demand, resulting in a fall in load factors – on average the load factor fell by 3.5 percentage points to 74.6%.
Looking forward, Bisignani predicted the events in Japan, the Middle East and North Africa to cause a continued depression in air travel, but that strong underlying economic growth would support recovery in the second half of 2011.
The big uncertainty, however, is the price of oil, he warned: “The fragility of the situation is demonstrated by the considerably weaker 3.3% year-on-year growth in economy class travel in February.
“And, despite efficiency gains, the industry’s 1.4% profit margin leaves it vulnerable in the face of volatile markets.”