Growth in passenger traffic slows to 2% year-over-year as air freight contracts in July
07-Sep-2012 With many major international airports in Europe and North America reporting lacklustre figures in passenger traffic in July, overall growth in global passenger markets slowed to +2% year-over-year. Counterbalancing the slowdown in these markets is the continued strong demand in emerging markets. The major airports of Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America-Caribbean posted robust year-over-year gains. Beijing (PEK), Dubai (DXB) and São Paulo (GRU) achieved growth of +6.1%, +6.0% and +9.0% respectively.
Freight markets suffered a decline of -2% in traffic volumes in July. Whereas many Asian airports experienced a buoyant rise in year-over-year passenger traffic, the opposite is occurring in the freight market. Hong Kong (HKG) and Shanghai (PVG) saw declines of -1.8% and -7.1% respectively. All but Africa and the Middle East, observed declines in freight traffic. Johannesburg (JNB) and Abu Dhabi (AUH) had double-digit gains of +13.0% and +27.8%.
ACI World's Economics Director Rafael Echevarne commented, "Regional trends in air transport markets continue to be mixed reflecting the combination of resilient demand from emerging markets and the slowdown of European and American economies. The net result is a modest overall growth rate in passenger traffic for the month of July. Air freight, on the other hand, is clearly in a contraction phase as business confidence wanes in parallel."
Table 1: Summary Worldwide Traffic Results, July 2012 (% change)
July 2012 Over July 2011 Year to date 2012 12-month rolling year
PaxFlash
International passenger 2.9 5.7 5.4
Domestic passenger 1.8 3.7 3.4
Totalpassenger 2.2 4.6 4.2
FreightFlash
International freight (1.7) (1.4) (2.2)
Domestic freight (1.9) (0.3) (0.8)
Totalfreight (2.1) (1.4) (2.0)