(Posted 23rd February 2023)
IATA is pleased to share the latest quarterly Air Transport Market Analysis.
Key points:
- Industry-wide air passenger traffic, measured in revenue passenger-kilometers (RPKs), continued its steady recovery in December 2022 and for the full year. Passenger traffic recovered from 41.7% of 2019 volumes in 2021 to 68.5% in 2022. Meanwhile, global air cargo demand, measured by cargo tonne-kilometers (CTKs), continued to decline year-on-year (YoY) in the fourth quarter of 2022, falling 15.3% YoY in December.
- By December 2022, IATA’s Global Air Connectivity Index, which measures connectivity as scheduled passenger capacity weighed by the relative economic scale of destinations served, had recovered to 74% of pre-pandemic levels for international connectivity and 87% for domestic connectivity.
- Airline financial performance continues to recover from the massive losses recorded in 2020 and our latest forecast suggests that profitability will return to the industry overall this year. However, this profitability is not likely to be shared evenly across regions, with only North America, Europe and Middle East carriers expected to post a net post-tax profit in 2023.
- The broadly positive industry outlook is supported by our latest Business Confidence survey where 70% of respondents indicated that they expect year-ahead profitability to exceed current levels.
