Air transport: for companies, the summer ended "in style"

Europe 1 with AFP 2:56 p.m., October 06, 2022

The summer, the peak period for air travel, ended "beautifully" this year, a "good increase" in demand allowing to find in August nearly three quarters of the passenger traffic of the same month of 2019, announced companies on Thursday.

World traffic, expressed in revenue passenger-kilometres (RPK for its acronym in English, one of the sector's benchmarks), reached in August "73.7% of the (monthly) pre-crisis level" health, has specified the International Air Transport Association (Iata) in a press release.

+ 67.7% over one year

This is certainly a slight erosion compared to July, when the sector had recovered 74.6% of RPK for the same month three years earlier, before the Covid-19 pandemic which ravaged the sector.

But over one year, traffic jumped 67.7%, welcomed Iata, for which "the peak summer travel season in the Northern Hemisphere ended in style".

This dynamism is above all due to the massive recovery in international travel, with RPKs up 115.6% year-on-year, to reach 67.4% of the 2019 level.

This index is further pulled down by movement restrictions in Asia, and particularly in the People's Republic of China, in an attempt to stem outbreaks of contamination.

“The lifting or easing of travel restrictions by some key Asian destinations, including Japan, will certainly accelerate the recovery in Asia,” said Iata Director General Willie Walsh, quoted in the press release.

Domestic routes reached 85.4% of 2019 RPK in August. Quicker to rebound at the very beginning of the lifting of health restrictions, they only increased by 26.5% over one year.

“Given the economic uncertainties, the demand for air travel is progressing well,” summarized Willie Walsh, whose organization federates 290 airlines claiming 83% of world traffic.

At its annual general meeting in June, Iata estimated that airlines, on average worldwide, would once again generate profits in 2023, and in 2024 they would return to their pre-crisis passenger traffic level.

The Covid-19 had caused them to lose 60% of their customers in 2020, and they had found only one in two in 2021.