Global Traffic Continues to Slow

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says global scheduled international traffic for March, compared to the same month in the previous year, increased 5.8% with load factors at 77.7%. But March passenger growth was skewed by the Easter holiday, which was in April last year. Adjusting for this distortion, real traffic growth in March was only four percent. The slowdown in the demand growth continues the sharp downward trend which began in December 2007 as the impact of the US credit crunch began to be felt in the airline industry. International passenger load factors were equally skewed. When adjusted to take into account artificially high utilization over the Easter period, the March load factor was actually 76.1%. While still high, this is 1.7 percentage points lower than the 77.8% recorded for the same month in 2007. This fall indicated that the slowing of demand occurred faster than airlines could cut capacity.