Air passenger traffic continues to grow, reaches 98.2% of pre-Covid levels

Domestic traffic for Oct '23 was also up 33.7% when compared with the same period last year. This was driven by the triple-digit percentage growth in China

Global air passenger traffic continued to grow in October 2023, with the total traffic reaching 98.2 per cent of pre-Covid levels, The Hindu Businessline (HBL) reported, citing data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which is an association of airlines across the world.

Airline traffic is measured in revenue passenger kilometres or RPKs. The RPK in October 2023 was 31.2 per cent up compared to the RPK in October 2022, the report said.

The HBL report said that the global recovery was led by Asia-Pacific airlines, which registered an 80.3 per cent increase in traffic for the October 2023 period. Moreover, the capacity of the airlines was also up 72.5 per cent and the load factor increased by 3.6 percentage points to 82.9 per cent, the newspaper reported.

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Domestic traffic for October 2023 was also up 33.7 per cent when compared with the traffic during the same period last year. This was primarily driven by the triple-digit percentage growth in China, which was 4.8 per cent above the October 2019 results. Notably, India registered a 10 per cent rise in its domestic air passenger traffic, HBL cited an IATA report as saying.

Director General of IATA, Willie Walsh was cited in the report as saying, "October's strong result brings the industry ever closer to completing the post-pandemic traffic recovery. Domestic markets remain above pre-Covid levels. International demand is recovering, but more slowly. In particular, Asia Pacific carriers' international demand is 19.5 per cent behind 2019. This could reflect the late lifting of Covid restrictions in parts of the region as well as commercial developments and political tensions."