Addendum
Asia-Pacific dominates air passenger growth
October 1st 2018
The Asia-Pacific continues to lead the way in airline traffic growth, even though none of the region’s carriers have made the top five when it comes to total scheduled passenger kilometres flown, according to the latest annual statistics from the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Read More »
The 62nd Edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS), the yearbook of the airline industry’s performance, showed that last year the world’s airlines carried 4.1 billion passengers on scheduled services, an increase of 7.3% over 2016, representing an additional 280 million trips by air. Airlines in the region once again carried the largest number of passengers, 1.5 billion, an increase of 10.6% over a year earlier giving them a 36.3% market share. That was well ahead of Europe with a 26.3% market share (1.1 billion passengers, up 8.2% over 2016) and North America’s 23% market share (941.8 million, up 3.2% over 2016).
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Latin America was fourth with a 7% market share (286.1 million, up 4.1% over 2016), followed by the Middle East’s 5.3% share (216.1 million, an increase of 4.6% over 2016) and Africa’s 2.2% (88.5 million, up 6.6% over 2016).
The world’s top five international/regional and domestic passenger airport pairs were all within the Asia-Pacific. Internationally, they were Hong Kong-Taipei Taoyuan (5.4 million, up 1.8% from 2016), Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta-Singapore (3.3 million, up 0.8% from 2016), Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong (3.1 million, increase of 3.5% from 2016), Kuala Lumpur–Singapore (2.8 million, down. 0.3% from 2016) and Hong Kong-Seoul Incheon (2.7 million, down 2.2% from 2016).
Domestically, the world’s top five domestic passenger airport pairs were Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (13.5 million, up 14.8% over 2016), Melbourne Tullamarine-Sydney (7.8 million, up 0.4% from 2016), Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.6 million, an increase of 6.1% from 2016), Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.4 million, up 4.6% from 2016) and Beijing Capital-Shanghai Hongqiao (6.4 million, up 1.9% from 2016).
A new statistic in the WATS report was the ranking of passenger traffic by nationality for international and domestic travel. U.S. citizens led the way with 632 million, representing 18.6% of all passengers, followed by the People’s Republic of China (555 million or 16.3% of all passengers), India (161.5 million or 4.7% of all passengers), the United Kingdom (147 million or 4.3% of all passengers) and Germany (114.4 million or 3.4% of all passengers).
On the cargo front there was a 9.9% expansion in freight and mail tonne kilometers (FTKs) last year, outstripping a capacity rise of 5.3% and increasing the freight load factor by 2.1%. The top five airlines ranked by scheduled freight tonne kilometers flown were Federal Express (16.9 billion), Emirates (12.7 billion), United Parcel Service (11.9 billion), Qatar Airways (11 billion) and Cathay Pacific Airways (10.8 billion).
Star Alliance maintained its position as the largest airline alliance in 2016 with 39% of total scheduled traffic (in RPKs), followed by SkyTeam (33%) and oneworld (28%).
IATA said the industry’s growth was supported by a broad-based improvement in global economic conditions and lower average airfares.
At the same time, airlines connected a record number of cities worldwide, providing regular services to over 20,000 city pairs in 2017, more than double the level of 1995. Such increases in direct services improve the industry’s efficiency by cutting costs and saving time for both travelers and shippers alike. “In 2000, the average citizen flew just once every 43 months. In 2017, the figure was once every 22 months. Flying has never been more accessible. And this is liberating people to explore more of our planet for work, leisure and education. Aviation is the business of freedom,” said IATA director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac.
