June traffic figures for the members of the Association of European Airlines
maintained the trend which has persisted throughout the first part of the Summer,
of depressed traffic volumes following a reduction in capacity.
Passenger traffic on intra-European routes was 7.8% lower than in June 2001, on a
capacity decrease of 10.9%. Consequently, load factor rose 2.4 percentage points
to 70.9%, a historically high June figure.
On the main longhaul regions, the traffic trend more closely matched the capacity
development. On the North Atlantic, passenger-km were 18.6% lower than last
year (capacity minus 19.2%) and to the Far East, a traffic loss of 4.4% was
contained within a seat-km decrease of 4.9%.
For all scheduled operations, both traffic and capacity were 11.6% down on last
year, leaving load factor unchanged at 76.2%.
The airfreight market is showing rather more encouraging signs of recovery, and in
June the traffic volume was 2.1% higher than in the previous year. The increase
was essentially due to a rather healthy growth of 9.2% in traffic to and from the Far
East. The AEA’s other major freight market, the North Atlantic, remained
depressed at minus 3.8%.
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