All the Michael O’Learys of this world will be left reeling from the global drop in air travel passengers for the month of March.
The decrease in air travel comes as a result of the Japanese earthquake, anarchy in the Middle East and higher fuel prices.
The figures won’t be pleasant reading for the likes of O’Leary and Co, but can you imagine what they’ll be like next month following the global travel alert after the killing of Osama bin Laden? Many reports say Americans are ignoring the warning of air travel in the last couple of days but surely the fear of retaliation from Al Qaeda is enough to prevent many from flying.
Back to the figures at hand and compared to February, global passenger demand in March 2011 fell by 0.3% last month, according the latest figures from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
For March, year-on-year growth in passenger demand slowed to 3.8% from the 5.8% recorded in February.
“The profile of the recovery in air transport sharply decelerated in March. The global industry lost 2 percentage points of demand as a result of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA),” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.
It hasn’t been all bad news, however, as cargo demand expanded by 4.5% last month.
Year-on-year growth in freight markets rebounded to 3.7% in March from the 1.8% recorded in February and compared to the previous March, cargo traffic carried by European and North American carriers was up 6.1% and 7.1% respectively.
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