SPECIAL REPORT: SUSTAINABILITY
Better times T
he aviation industry has once again shown its legendary powers of recovery by registering 12 months of global traffic growth to July 2010 despite the continuing global economic crisis. The only blip on an otherwise successful year was April’s dip
in traffic due to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which led to the closure of more than 300 airports in Europe for up to six days. Year-on-year global passenger growth during the first six months of
2010 stood at plus 6%, while the rolling 12 month period showed an increase of 4%, coming off a low of -6% registered in July 2009. These figures confirm a very steep recovery of the air transport
sector since the height of the crisis in the first quarter of 2009. In August, ACI released two of its key data publications, the World
Annual Traffic Report (WATR) for 2009 as well as the preliminary traffic data for the first six months of 2010. And both emphasise that the global aviation market is undergoing significant structural change. The WATR figures confirm that global passenger traffic declined by
1.8%. This relatively mild decrease came partly as a surprise in light of the deepest global recession since the 1930s. A global improvement in passenger numbers throughout the second
half of the year helped pull overall figures up, with countries in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions making a significant contribution towards the upturn. China led the way in the Asia-Pacific region with a 15% rise in passenger traffic. The second fastest growing major aviation market in 2009, however,
was Brazil, which registered a 13% rise in passengers. The growth in Brazil came despite a marginal reduction in GDP of 0.2%, while GDP in China expanded by 9%. The traffic growth in Brazil means that it is now the eighth largest aviation market in the world handling more than 135 million passengers per annum. The total means that Brazil handles more passengers than Mexico,
Argentina and Colombia combined and ensures that it is a bigger market than Australia and Canada and similar in size to France. In terms of the overall picture for 2009, domestic passenger traffic
was flat (-0.2%), while international numbers dropped by 4%. The decline in the latter means that people on domestic flights now account for 59% of all passengers. Domestic traffic increased by 8.5% in Asia-Pacific and 5.5% in
the Latin America & Caribbean (LAC) region, where Argentina, Brazil and Colombia all experienced growth of between 13% and 15%. In marked contrast to these high-flyers, domestic traffic in Mexico declined 13% last year. If the current trends continue, Brazil will shortly replace Japan as the
third largest domestic market in the world behind the US and China. With the exception of the Middle East, all regions registered drops
in international passengers. The rise in the Middle East was boosted by a healthy 9.6% increase in international passengers at Dubai International Airport.
24 AIRPORT WORLD/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010
ACI’s economics director, Andreas Schimm, reviews the latest traffic figures and considers what they mean for the long-term sustainability of airports.
Looking at the first six months of 2010, the trend of domestic traffic
outpacing international traffic has been turned on its head. For, with the exception of volcanic ash affecting April, every month has shown higher international than domestic growth. Nowhere has this trend been more pronounced than Asia-Pacific, where an already impressive 13% growth in domestic passengers has been topped by a 16% increase in international traffic. An exception to the rule is the Latin America & Caribbean region,
where a 10% rise in international traffic has failed to keep pace with soaring domestic demand, which is up 13% on the corresponding period in 2009. To determine how much progress the industry has made in
recovering from the downturn, ACI has compared the first half of 2010 with passenger numbers of the first half of 2008, the period before the onset of the crisis. And the pre/post crisis comparison illustrates the shift the global
industry has undergone as, for the first time ever, in the first six months of 2010, the Asia-Pacific region had more passengers during a semester than Europe or North America, which both remained 7.5% below H1 2008 passenger volumes. Falling demand in Europe and North America in the first half of 2010
are also the key reasons why worldwide passenger numbers are 0.7% down on the same period in 2008. The divergent air traffic recovery is also reflected in GDP growth in
key economies. Year-on-year GDP growth in the second quarter in Japan and the US was reported to be 2% and 3% respectively while the Eurozone – clearly helped by a buoyant German export industry that grew by 4.1% – only expanded by 1.7%. Elsewhere, GDP expanded more significantly. China reported 10.3%
more output than a year ago and was joined by Brazil, whose GDP is estimated to have grown by over 10%. Contrary to passenger traffic, the international sector of
airfreight has expanded beyond pre-crisis levels in the first half of 2010 compared to H1 2008. A 31% year-on-year increase in international freight catapulted the industry 2.5% above corresponding 2008 levels. Similar to passenger traffic, this recovery was propelled by airports
in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East where total freight grew by 30% and 24% respectively during the first six months. While Europe and North America also registered extraordinary growth of 24% and 17% respectively, it was not enough to reach pre-crisis volumes. As the recovery in the freight sector only began in the last quarter of
2009, exceptionally high growth figures can continue to be expected in the third quarter before growth will return to rates below 10% in the last quarter and into 2011. This period will also show how sustainable the global economic recovery is and whether the current demand is pent-up or represents genuine net increases.
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