|
Compared
to the same month in the previous year,
passenger demand increased 5.8 per cent with
load factors at 77.7 per cent.
Freight
traffic grew 3.2 per cent.
March
passenger growth is positively skewed by the
Easter holiday period which was in April of
the previous year.
Adjusting
for this distortion, real traffic growth in
March was 4 per cent.
The
slowdown in the demand growth continues the
sharp downward trend which began in December
2007 as the impact of the US credit crunch
began to be felt in the airline industry.
International
passenger load factors were equally skewed.
When
adjusted to take into account artificially
high utilisation over the Easter period, the
March load factor was 76.1 per cent.
While
still high, this is 1.7 percentage points
lower than the 77.8, per cent recorded for
the same month in 2007.
This
fall indicated that the slowing of demand
occurred faster than airlines could cut
capacity.
International
freight growth of 3.2 per cent remains
sluggish and well below the
4.3
per cent growth recorded in 2007. |
