The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has today published the global passenger traffic data for the August month and the report shows that the air passenger traffic (measured in total revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) has gone up by 3.8% as compared to the same period previous year. As opposed to this figure, the increase was only 3.5% in July. August capacity also (available seat kilometers or ASKs) increased by 3.5% in the same period. The Load factor in the industry also went up by 0.3% percentage point to 85.7%. This is a new monthly record set, and the trend is expected to continue as the airlines continue to better utilise resources.
Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO remarked about this new report, “While we saw a pick-up in passenger demand in August compared to July, growth remains below the long-term trend and well-down on the roughly 8.5% annual growth seen over the 2016 to Q1 2018 period. This reflects the impact of economic slowdowns in some key markets, uncertainty over Brexit and the trade war between the US and China. Nonetheless, airlines are doing a great job of matching capacity to demand. With passenger load factors reaching a new high of 85.7% this is good for overall efficiency and passengers’ individual carbon footprint.”
The IATA report highlighted that in the Asia Pacific region, August traffic went up by 3.5% as compared to the same period in the previous year, this was a much better figure as compared to the 2.6% rise in July. However, there is also the fact that this figure remains lower than the long-term average growth rate of around 6.5%. As per IATA, this is also reflecting of slow growth in India and Australia and the reason could also be contributed to the trade disputes going on in the countries. In the same period studied by IATA, the Capacity went up by 3.9% and load factor went down by 0.4% point to 82.8%.
