Air travel industry predicts slow rebound

According to the Federal Aviation Administration the air travel industry will begin its slow return to normalcy in 2010, with continued slow growth forecasted for the next twenty years.

The administration’s annual forecast, which links economic growth to the aviation industry, was released yesterday and also included projections that airline passengers inside the United States will reach the 1 billion mark by the year 2023, two years later than earlier predictions.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s 20-year forecast covered the fiscal years from 2010 to 2030 and predicted that the number of passengers actually aboard planes, known as enplanement, will rise by just 0.5 percent this year for US domestic bookings, with the remainder of the forecast period projected to grow at around 2.5 percent per annum. On the international stage, this year’s forecast if for 0.9 percent growth followed by a 4.1 percent growth period for the remainder of the period.

Total airport traffic for 2010 is projected to decrease by 2.7 percent to a figure of 51.5 million passengers. Thereafter it is expected to grow at an average annual increase of 1.5 percent to reach a total of 69.6 million passengers by the year 2030.

With airport traffic in the US predicted to grow by 60 percent at the country’s 35 busiest airports in the next two decades, passengers on US domestic airlines will face minimal rate increases thanks to the increased flight schedule. Last year’s number of US airline passengers across both international and domestic routes was 704 million, which is expected to reach 1.21 billion in twenty years time. The FAA has also claimed that technological advances and safety improvements will also spur long-term growth.