January saw a slowing of global passenger traffic growth, partly affected by the later Lunar New Year in 2018, an IATA report showed. Passenger traffic grew 4.6%t in January, from the year ago period, the slowest year-on-year increase in almost four years, IATA reported in its monthly update. The Lunar New Year travel period holiday represented around two-fifths of the slowdown for the month. Regionally, Europe returned the highest rate of passenger traffic, 6.4%, measured in revenue passenger kms. Asia Pacific was second on 5.4% growth and Latin America third with 5.0%. North American pax traffic grew by 3.5% in January. The Middle East’s growth moderated during the month, with just a 0.8% increase in traffic, the lowest of any region. <br/>
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Despite several airlines abandoning their service to Cuba, the competition remains hotly contested among other US carriers competing to boost their flights to Havana. The DoT set a limit of 20 daily round-trips to Havana, with more flights to other cities, when it reopened scheduled passenger service in Feb 2016. The competition to serve the Caribbean destination was fierce, and all Havana slots were allocated by Aug 2016. But since then, with a weak market and diplomatic tensions, several airlines have dropped out. Frontier Airlines ended daily round-trips between Miami and Havana. Spirit Airlines ended twice-daily flights between Fort Lauderdale and Havana. While the department weighed who should get those slots, Alaska Airlines ended its daily service between Los Angeles and Havana in January. <br/>
Major carriers are plotting to collect the personal data of every passenger and use it to set personalised prices that could mean big increases for some and discount coupons for others, senator Chuck Schumer said Sunday. The so called “micro-target pricing” would use information, such as how rich someone is and what web sites they frequent, to set airfares. It’s a spy-and-fly plan that Schumer denounced as a major invasion of privacy. “This is ‘Big Brother’ meets ‘Big Business’ and it is frightening combo for already-price badgered airline travellers,” the Schumer said. Schumer called for the FTC to investigate this new pricing platform, which he fears could spread to other industries. “Consumers and travellers should never have to worry that their private information is being used to increase their personal costs,” Schumer said. <br/>
At an aviation summit in Brussels this past week, Europe’s main airlines put on a display of unity over the challenges ahead. But the industry’s CEs were divided when it came to the biggest issue of all: Brexit. The UK’s scheduled departure from the EU in March 2019 has provoked widely varying reactions from carriers in the 28-nation bloc. The airline industry differs from others such as energy and chemicals where, from London to Lisbon, companies uniformly say that the UK’s departure is a major headache. The dissonance suggests some carriers sense the possibility of a Brexit accord that would prevent hassles for tens of millions air travellers while ushering Britain, home of Europe’s busiest airport, out of the European single aviation market. <br/>
Airbus says India will need 1,750 new passenger and cargo aircraft over the next 20 years to meet strong demand, with the country set to become the world’s third largest aviation market by 2019/20. Of the total, Airbus forecasts the need for 1,320 new single-aisle aircraft and 430 wide-bodies. In total, the aircraft are valued at US$255b at list prices. Airbus said the growth is expected to be driven “by the fast expanding economy, rising wealth and urbanisation, [and] ambitious govt backed regional connectivity programmes. Four times as many Indians are forecast to travel by air in 2036 as today, with the market to expand by 8.1% per annum over the next 20 years. That is almost twice the global forecast of 4.4%. Domestic Indian traffic is expected to grow 5.5 times over the 2017-2036 period. <br/>