AAPA member airlines brace for difficult year

KUALA LUMPUR – The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) has released preliminary traffic figures for the full year 2008.

AAPA member airlines carried 141.5 million international passengers in 2008, 1.8 percent fewer than the record levels achieved in 2007.

Passenger traffic measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) terms was down by one percent.

Capacity growth for the year was 1.7 percent, whilst the average passenger load factor fell two percentage points to 75.1 percent.

Andrew Herdman, AAPA director general said, “In what proved to be a particularly challenging year, airlines were battered by skyrocketing oil prices followed by rapidly weakening demand as the effects of the global economic downturn ricocheted around the world.

“AAPA passenger traffic held up reasonably well for the first nine months of the year, before growth tapered off.

“For the fourth quarter of 2008, AAPA international passenger numbers were seven percent down on the previous year.”

Herdman said the situation in the air cargo market was even more dire, “as demand for air cargo collapsed in the second half of the year”.

He added, “With no sign of any respite amidst the global economic downturn, Asia Pacific airlines are braced for another extremely difficult year ahead.”