Air Traffic Up By 6% In '96

The world's airlines carried an estimated 1.4 billion scheduled passengers in 1996, a rise of six per cent over 1995, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said.

Passenger traffic rose by nine per cent to 409 million, while domestic traffic was 4.7 per cent higher at 971 million passengers, figures published by IATA in its latest World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) show.

It added that freight tonnes carried rose to 22.9 million tonnes, an increase of five per cent over the previous year. International freight was 5.7 per cent higher at 13.7 million tonnes, with domestic freight rising 4.4 per cent to 9.2 million tonnes.

There was a 6.9 per cent increase in international freight tonne kilometres (FTKs) with domestic FTKs up 6.4 per cent.

IATA added that the average annual growth in FTKs on international scheduled services in the past decade has been nine per cent against only two per cent for domestics FTKs.

Overall scheduled mail tonne kilometres (MTKs) were up 6.3per cent in 1996 over 1995 with international and domestic traffic gaining 6.3 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively.