Director
General of ACI World, Angela Gittens announced the publication of
ACI’s 2011 World Annual Traffic Report.
“ACI’s
flagship publication is a unique and comprehensive industry reference
providing data, indicators and analyses from over 1,500 airports in
over 150 countries. The report describes the continued growth
trajectory following the two-year recession of 2008-2009. Although
2011 can best be characterized as a year plagued with economic
uncertainty, natural disasters and sociopolitical upheaval, airport
passenger traffic posted another record year. The world’s airports
served more than 5.4 billion passengers in 2011 growing by 5.3% from
2010. This is ongoing evidence of the sheer size of the global
aviation market as well as the perseverance of the industry as a
whole.”
Commenting
on cargo traffic, Gittens said, “Trade in air cargo was not as
resilient to the uncertain economic climate that was primarily
brought on by the debt default risks in European and North American
economies. In the latter half of 2011, with business confidence
deteriorating, cargo traffic contracted in tandem. In the aggregate,
cargo volumes were almost flat in 2011 relative to 2010 at 93.1
million tonnes.”
2011
– Key statistics in Brief
1,520
airports located in 156 countries reported that:
• Worldwide
airport passenger numbers increased by 5.3% in 2011 to 5.44 billion,
registering increases in five of six regions
Latin
America-Caribbean (+8.5%), Middle East (+7.7%), Asia-Pacific (+7.0%)
and Europe (+7.0%) all showed robust growth in passenger traffic,
North America (+1.8%) experienced moderate growth; With the brunt of
social and political unrest in Northern Africa, Africa (-3.5%) saw a
contraction in year-over-year passenger traffic.
• Worldwide
domestic traffic increased by 3.7%, while international traffic
jumped by 6.6%
• Worldwide
aircraft movements increased 2.3% to 77 million
• Total
cargo volumes handled by airports was flat at 0.2%, which represents
93.1
million tonnes
• 70%
of airports worldwide registered positive passenger growth at an
average of 7.9%, while 30% of airports lost traffic at an average
rate of -5.9%.
Gittens
remarked on some new additions to the report, “In this edition of
the World Annual Airport Traffic Report, ACI provides new
perspectives and analyses based on an expanded airport traffic data
set. In addition, a historical perspective was adopted to quantify
the adverse impact of major events on airport traffic and demonstrate
the resilience of air transport demand over the last decade. Market
share and traffic concentration is also investigated in greater depth
among the major airport hub cities of the world. The Report also
features specialized sections covering the measurement of airport
traffic fluctuations and seasonality. A review of airport output
indicators is also a new and insightful additions to this year’s
report. As always, ACI provides the most comprehensive airport
traffic data and rankings in an internationally comparable format, as
well as regional traffic trends to provide our members and readership
a global view of the industry as a whole.”
