European airline traffic slumps; Austrian Airlines shares suffer - share wrap

Airline shares were hit hard in Europe yesterday, as economic worries intensified and more extremely weak traffic results emerged.The Association of European Airlines' (AEA) Secretary General, Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus, stated, "we have no reason to suppose that we are at, or even approaching, the bottom of the cycle". 19 AEA members reduced seat capacity in December, eight of them by more than 10% - yet, overall, the traffic decline was still greater than the capacity cutbacks.