Airline industry recovering

The airline industry is showing signs of a healthy recovery according to the latest statistics from IATA. Passenger traffic grew 5.9% in January year-on-year. IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani said: “It is a good start towards achieving the 7% annual growth target in global passenger traffic that we have forecast for 2004.” The strongest growth was in the Middle East region, where passenger was up 30.3% in January. Although IATA says this jump in figures is due to the lack of air travel during the height of the conflict in Iraq last year. In North America passenger traffic grew 3.3% in January and in Europe it was up 3.8%. Passenger load factors were over 70% in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Report by Ginny McGrath