Asia-Pacific Airlines Improve Financial Performance

Berlin: Airlines in Asia-Pacific region improved their financial performance in January-March this year, despite a slump in the passenger traffic growth due to the Icelandic ash crisis that paralysed the European skies.
The latest figures of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which begins its session here tomorrow, showed that the strong growth witnessed by the Asia-Pacific carriers earlier, experienced a slowdown in growth to 3.5% from 12.9% recorded in March.
The strongest traffic growth was recorded by the Middle Eastern airlines at 13%, which is about half the 25.9% increase of the previous month.
Regarding the slowdown in passenger traffic demand, the IATA report pointed out that the demand was weak for seasonal reasons and airlines typically made 80% of their earnings in the second and third quarters.
On the first quarter financial results, the IATA said the Asia-Pacific airlines "have improved most" as there were "signs of a significant improvement in all regions at the operating level, though Europe stands out as the weakest performer – even before the impact of the ash plume".
07/06/10 Amitabha Roy Chowdhury/Outlook

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Categories: Foreign Jun 2010, Indian Aviation- In General Jun 2010