Cross-Border, Far East Traffic Show Increases; North Atlantic Stagnant

The Association of European Airlines informed ANN Wednesday of the release of traffic and capacity data for its members in December 2006... giving a first look at the overall traffic and capacity results for 2006. AEA members boarded 343.6 million passengers during the course of the year, 14.8 million more than in 2005... and an increase of 4.5 percent.

Using the more conventional measure of passenger-kilometers to gauge European traffic volume, the number grew by slightly more --  a 5.2 percent increase, which AEA says comes from a slight increase in the average length of airline journeys.

Looking at the individual operating regions, in order of size:

• North Atlantic (26% of total AEA passenger-km) grew by just 0.7%. This is the second successive low growth figure on the North Atlantic, following a 2.0% increase in 2005.
• Cross-Border Europe (23% of total) increased by 6.9%, a strong growth in the historical perspective.
• Far East/Australasia (20%) grew by 9.8%. The region has been strongly and consistently in growth since the end of the SARS crisis in 2003, although the 2006 total fell short of the expected double-digit growth due to an uncharacteristically weak December result of just +4.9%
• Domestic Europe (8%) posted a 2.5% increase. This market, which accounts for almost one-third of AEA passenger boardings, has significantly underperformed the cross-border segment for the last three years.

  

Significant among the other operating regions -- which make up the remaining one-quarter of AEA passenger traffic -- were a 12.8% increase to traffic across the South Atlantic, and reviving North Africa and Middle East markets which grew at +10.4% and +6.3%, respectively.

The 5.2% traffic growth was accommodated within a capacity increase of 4.4%, so for the third successive year a load factor increase was recorded, by 0.6 percentage points to 76.5%. All the longhaul regions except Africa posted load factors in excess of 80%. Seat occupancy on the South Atlantic was a remarkable 86.3%, by a considerable margin the highest annual load factor ever recorded on any AEA operating region.

After a no-growth year in 2005, the air-freight market staged a modest recovery with a plus 2.4%. Over three-quarters of the market travelled either on the North Atlantic or to and from Asia, and these two segments showed similar growth, at 2.6% and 2.9% respectively.

Said AEA Secretary General Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus: "There are some key messages in the figures. One of them, clearly, is that we continue to deliver the product which the customer wants -- 11 million new passengers in Europe alone speaks for itself as a resounding endorsement of the network airlines' business model."

"Just as important, though, is the capacity growth, for the second successive year held below 4.5%. We are not an industry in a state of runaway expansion, as some commentators would claim. Load factor improvements are a measure of the increasing efficiency with which we use our resources. While we continue to be fully engaged in meeting the environmental challenges facing the industry, we continue to stress that traffic growth, taken in isolation, is a misleading measure of the scale of those challenges."

FMI: www.aea.be