Decline in summer travel projected

The Air Transport Association (ATA) is projecting that the number of Americans preparing to travel by air this coming summer will decline by around one percent, when compared with numbers from the same period in 2007. As such, US carriers can expect either stagnation in their load factors, or outright decline, if ATA’s predictions turn out to be accurate. Yet airlines in the US can at least take comfort in the fact that the number of Americans who travelled by air last summer-specifically between June 1^st and August 31^st-was actually much higher than in most years, making the expected one percent decline less problematic.

According to ATA’s survey, 211 million people in the US will choose to travel by air during the summer season, rather than just over 214 million who flew during the same period last year. ATA noted that the decline is due to three main factors, namely cuts to capacity by various airlines, the looming recession, as well as dramatically higher fuel prices.

James May, ATA’s CEO, pointed out that the decline in the number of Americans travelling by Air will ultimately be “marginal” and as such, carriers as well as individual passengers need to prepare themselves for the sorts of delays that troubled the industry last summer. May also noted that New York remains a “chokepoint” when it comes to lengthy delays and heavy passenger traffic.

www.airlines.org