African air passenger demand drops

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced scheduled international traffic results for March 2011 showing that year-on-year growth in passenger demand had slowed to 3.8% from the 5.8% recorded in February. Compared to February, global passenger demand fell by 0.3% in March
The impact of the events in Japan on global international traffic was a 1% loss of traffic in March. The disruptions in MENA (Middle East & North Africa) cut international travel by 0.9 percentage points. Looked at regionally, Asia-Pacific carriers saw a traffic loss of over 2%, North American carriers had a 1% drop and Europe’s carriers a 0.5% fall. Japan’s domestic market was the most severely impacted with a 22% fall in demand. Egypt and Tunisia experienced traffic levels 10-25% below normal for March. Military action in Libya virtually stopped civil aviation to, from and within that country.
African carriers saw demand fall 7.0% compared to the previous March. This is an improvement from the 9.7% drop recorded in February. Compared to the previous month, the region saw demand expand by 6.5% against an increase in capacity of 6.2%. Load factors improved by 0.2 percentage points to 62.7%. This is sharply below the industry average of 74.6%.

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