IATA’s recently released international traffic data for January to April revealed that Middle Eastern carriers are witnessing the highest passenger and cargo growth worldwide, a trend that looks set to continue.
For the first four months of the year, the Middle East reported an 18.3% increase in passenger traffic on the same period in 2005.
This compared to an overall global average of 6.9%.
In terms of freight traffic, the Middle Eastern airlines led growth at 17.9% compared to the global 5.7%.
African and European carriers lagged behind at 2.7% and 2.5% respectively.
“Strong economies are supporting strong demand growth for both freight and passenger traffic.
Even with the high price of oil and rising interest rates there is no apparent drop in demand and carriers are responding with careful capacity management that saw the April load factors reach their highest point (76.5%) in the past decade,†said Giovanni Bisignani, director general and CEO, IATA.
April growth was particularly strong due to the impact of a late Easter holiday, which saw many Europeans in particular head to Middle East destinations.
Global passenger traffic grew by 9.9% over the previous April, while capacity expanded by only 5.5%.
IATA’s findings are supported by OAG’s recent flight frequency and capacity reports comparing July 4-10, 2005 to July 3-9, 2006 tabled.
The region’s three fastest-growing carriers, Air Arabia, Etihad Airways and Emirates Airlines are performing well across the three key regions: Asia Pacific, North Africa and Western Europe.
Abu Dhabi-based Etihad is leading the way, reporting a 146% increase in flight frequencies and a 209% hike in capacity in the Asia Pacific league table; improvements of 70% and 113% respectively for Western Europe and increases of 129% and 177% respectively for North Africa.
The latter result has been aided by Etihad’s recently introduced four-times-a-week service to Casablanca in Morocco.
Emirates has also performed well in the North Africa league table, achieving 30% flight frequency growth, while bumping up capacity by 28%.
Burgeoning low cost carrier, Air Arabia is charging full steam ahead on routes between its Sharjah base and Asia Pacific, having launched services to several destinations across India and Afghanistan.
The airline also made its European debut at the end of May when it launched a twice-weekly service to Istanbul.
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