INTERNATIONAL. Passenger traffic at the world’s airports grew +6.1% year-on-year in April, according to Airports Council International (ACI) World data.
The figure is slightly below the 12-month rolling average of +6.5%, ACI noted, and a departure from the high growth levels of recent months. The organisation attributed this to the timing of this year’s Easter period.
“Breaking with a general trend observed over the last year, domestic traffic was the major contributor to global growth in April with international traffic slowing,” said ACI World Director General Angela Gittens.
Click on image to enlarge.
Domestic traffic was up +7.1% on a global basis, bringing its year-to-date increase to +6.2%. International passenger traffic slowed to +4.9% for April, from +10.5% in March. In terms of total passenger traffic, Asia Pacific and Africa both benefitted from high growth, with +9.9% and +9% increases respectively.
ACI noted that most major Asia Pacific markets posted solid growth during the period, with India again leading the way (+20.4%). The country has recently been growing at a particularly fast rate; its 12-month rolling average now stands at +16% (from +14.3% in March).
Indonesia and China also recorded double-digit growth in April, at +13.5% and +11.8% respectively. Korea and Japan followed with +9.2% and +7% increases.
In Africa, Nigeria continued the recovery started in the second half of 2017, posting +36% growth in April. ACI said the country “had been fast reclaiming the ground lost during its economic crisis”, with year-to-date growth reaching +33% and its 12-month rolling average now at 10.7%. Egypt and Morocco also saw solid growth, at +13.3% and +9.6% respectively.
Click on image to enlarge.
Europe and North America’s passenger markets both grew +5% in April. Unequal growth patterns re-emerged in Europe, ACI noted, with several major markets such as Spain (+2.8%), France (+0.8%) and Germany (+0.4%) posting subdued figures. These results were affected by the timing of Easter in 2017, which came relatively late and boosted April figures last year. Following that trend, and against a backdrop of “particularly difficult” European Union exit negotiations, the UK posted a -1.6% decrease.
Europe’s peripheral markets continued to grow, with countries such as Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and Finland all growing by double-digits on both a year-on-year basis and year-to-date basis. Turkey and the Russian Federation also continued to recover, with +14.2% and +11.6% year-on-year growth.
The +5.5% growth in North America’s passenger market was supported by the USA’s robust domestic segment in April, according to ACI. Latin America-Caribbean traffic was up +3%, with Mexico and Argentina experiencing relatively robust growth of +8.8% and +6.9% respectively despite “complex internal situations”.
Traffic in the Middle East was down -2.4% year-on-year. The region’s passenger traffic has been suffering from ongoing political crises affecting a number of countries, slowly bringing its growth trend downward, ACI said. The Qatar diplomatic crisis, which started on 5 June 2017, is still ongoing, “dragging on the traffic flows of most countries on the Arabian Peninsula”. The region’s year-to-date figures for total passengers reached +0.3% in April.
