IATA has followed hard on the heals of OAG in producing airline statistics for February, the difference being that their figures are for actual passengers (rather than seats and flights) and the figures are published monthly rather than quarterly. Last month international passenger traffic grew by 6.8% and international freight traffic by 5.4%. The year-to-date passenger traffic growth of 6.4% is in line with industry projections of 6.5% growth in 2006. While passenger growth was in line with projections, North American carrier growth of 3.6% is significantly below the high levels recorded in 2005, as US-carriers re-allocated domestic capacity to higher-yielding international markets. The Middle East remains the fastest growing region with 15.3% passenger traffic gain largely being matched by capacity growth as new aircraft are delivered to the region. Improved economic conditions in Continental Europe and Japan led to increases of 7.3% in Asia and 6.4% in Europe. Load factors also improved. February's passenger load factor of 73.3% was 1.2% higher than in February 2005.
http://www.iata.org