By Miranda Horan
ACI World recently released its traffic statistics for September 2009, a report compiled from data provided by 168 worldwide member airports. According to the report, the numbers indicate that the stabilization trend of the past two months has been maintained and the domestic traffic in certain national markets is registering real growth relative to September 2008. Overall domestic passenger traffic rose by 4.4 percent worldwide and global passenger traffic rose by 1.6 percent.
Passenger
The domestic traffic results in China, Brazil and India are leading the global upswing, and the Asia-Pacific and Latin America-Caribbean regions dominate September traffic results with increases in domestic traffic of 12.5 and 16.2 percent respectively. A number of major and emerging economies expanded or returned to GDP growth in the 3rd quarter, which is driving the improved results. Economic stimulus programs, stiff domestic competition and low fares are contributing to the strong results in Brazil and China. North America, Europe and Africa remained virtually flat in terms of domestic traffic change. All regions are clearly up from reported lows earlier in the year for international traffic; however, Europe seems to lag slightly behind the recovery trend. The significant -5 percent reduction of traffic in Europe was only partially offset by a 6 percent increase in Asia-Pacific traffic. North America has delivered promising results as domestic traffic increased marginally by 0.5 percent and international only shrank by 3 percent. Worldwide, international traffic was 1 percent below 2008 results for September.
Freight
Turning to the freight results, global freight in September 2009 was 3 percent below traffic in September 2008. This represents an accelerating upward trend, again driven by domestic results which rose by 4 percent as compared to a 6 percent decline in international freight. The year-to-date slump in freight has been much deeper than the passenger decline, so seeing these moderate declines comes as a pleasant surprise and may point to a quicker recovery in the freight sector than previously thought. Drivers again are Asia-Pacific and Latin America-Caribbean regions. Asia-Pacific performance shows a stunning recovery from -28 percent to an increase of 1.3 percent in September.