The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Thursday that European airlines lost approximately 2.5 billion dollars in revenue as a result of the 2015-2016 terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.
IATA, in a statement, noted that its recent study also showed that European international passenger traffic fell approximately 1.6 percent in the year following the incidents.
It said the impact of the incidents proved temporary as the airlines’ international traffic began to recover in June 2016, and later picked up to exceed the pre-incident trend pace.
According to IATA, traffic on the Europe-Asia market has not returned to the seasonally adjusted growth trend in place before the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the Brussels Airport bombing in March 2016.
It quoted its senior economist, David Oxley, as saying, “this was helped by a pick-up in global and regional economic conditions, as well as a broader stimulus from lower airfares.
“All told, European airlines’ international traffic had recovered above its trend level by the end of 2016.
“Outbound travel from Asia is known to be particularly sensitive to shock events.”
Oxley said that industry-wide Revenue Per Kilometres (RPKs) grew at a 7.4 percent pace in 2016.
He added that IATA estimated the 2016 pace to have grown at 7.8 percent if the terrorist incidents had not happened.
According to him, European airlines’ international traffic accounts for approximately 24 percent of industry-wide RPKs.
“The relatively quick resumption of international air passenger traffic for European airlines in mid-2016 was similar to the rebounds seen following the SARS pandemic in 2003 and the Icelandic ash cloud in 2010.
“This underlines the resilience of air passenger demand to short-lived shock events.
“International RPKs flown by European airlines remain around 30per cent lower than where they would have been if they had followed the trend growth path that they were following during the early to mid-2000s,” Oxley said.
(NAN)