Key points from IATA full report on premium and economy travel in April:
* The data for April, after a strong first quarter, showed signs of weakness in passenger markets;
* Compared to a year ago premium travel in April was up by 5.8%, while economy travel increased 7.3%;
* The earlier improvement in share of premium class passengers appears to have stopped;
* Key business travel drivers, such as world trade and business confidence, have fallen;
* The April year-on-year growth rates were exaggerated, as in previous months, by the impact of the Japan earthquake and the Arab Spring that occurred a year ago;
* Excluding these impacts we estimate premium travel would have been 2% points higher than April last year;
* Economy travel is in a similar position, resulting in underlying growth of about 5% in April year-on-year;
* April’s weakness concentrated in the North Atlantic – which contracted by 0.3% in April, weakened by the Eurozone crisis;
* Markets in Asia and the Pacific remain relatively robust.
Source: IATA Economics
