Premium travel outlook "very depressed" - IATA

The economic blowtorch is well and truly on. The number of passengers travelling on premium tickets worldwide shrank at an accelerating rate for the third month in a row in Aug-08, according to IATA, as the deterioration in economic conditions caused a slump in business travel. In August, for the first time since SARS in 2003, there was a decline in the number of passengers travelling on both premium and economy tickets. The post Summer pick-up in premium traffic has also failed to materialise and the unprecedented financial market turbulence is expected to show up in even more depressed figures in the remainder of 2008.