The price of scheduled airfares fell in “real terms” last year, according to a new report by IATA.
The association said that the average price of flights dropped by 7.4% in 2013 compared to the previous year, when inflation is taken into account.
IATA’s annual World Air Transport Statistics also revealed that there was a 5.1% global rise in the number of passengers using scheduled airlines to a total of 3.13 billion.
The UK is the biggest scheduled air market in Europe with 177.9 million total passengers last year – a rise of 3.7% on 2012. Overall European air traffic rose by 3.4% to 825.9 million.
The biggest air market in the world remains the US with total passengers of 618.1 million, an increase of 3.3% year-on-year. Meanwhile China saw a rise of 11.8% to 404.2 million passengers.
London to Dublin is the second busiest international route in the world according to IATA with annual traffic of 3.6 million. Hong Kong to Taipei takes the number one spot with 4.9 million passengers with Jakarta-Singapore (3.4 million) in third place.
The busiest domestic route in the world is Seoul to Jeju in South Korea with 9.6 million annual passengers.
IATA boss Tony Tyler said: “The industry carried more than three billion passengers and nearly 48 million tonnes of cargo on nearly 100,000 flights per day, while the real price of air travel fell by 7.4%.
“Aviation’s annual contribution exceeds even these impressive figures. Its global economic impact is estimated at $2.4 trillion and it supports 3.4% of global GDP.”