Today, we’re announcing our second analysis of global airline traffic trends. The study details the air passenger growth between regions and reveals that Asia is leading world travel growth moving more travellers than ever around the world. It also showed us that 8 out of the 10 top inter-city routes are in Asia-Pacific. None of them are in Europe or North America! You can see the growth patterns in the Global airline traffic trends infographic above.
Travel is closely linked with the economic performance – but also politicial environment – of a region, so some of the findings of the study are not a surprise if you follow the news. Yet, in the analysis, we also highlight other markets that might not have crossed your mind but still display important growth like Chile (21% growth).
This macro-level understanding of worldwide air passenger flows is built on the analysis of thousands of O&Ds (Origin and Destination routes). This powerful research is done with the Amadeus Total Demand tool, launched two years ago in partnership with airconomy, a strategy consultancy for aviation networks. The tool has enabled us to look into:
- Connecting air traffic share versus point-to-point traffic
- Fastest growing and shrinking travel markets
- The world’s busiest inter-city routes
Amadeus Total Demand takes into account air passenger flows between a given origin and final destination airport (O&D data), irrespective of the number of connecting stops. This means it can measure true traveller trends. What is great with Total Demand is that we can look at the big picture but also zoom down to the level of a single O&D and analyse, for instance, how many people fly direct or use a connection. We can also see the split between Economy and Premium cabins.
For instance, air traffic between Europe and the Middle East grew by 3% year on year, with more than 35 million air passengers. The #1 O&D in that region – London to Dubai posted 24% growth, while at the same time the 2nd largest (London – Tel Aviv) remained flat in air passenger terms.
A few things have changed since we launched our first global traffic trends analysis. Firstly, we have changed the approach of the analysis. The first time we looked at Q1 data over a period of two years. This time we analyse traveller data over a full year – 2011 compared to 2010 – which reduces seasonality differences from one region to another.
The second change is that Amadeus acquired airconomy earlier in the year. The airconomy team is based at Frankfurt airport; it is a small team which, despite of its size, brings a huge amount of knowledge to the Amadeus travel intelligence business. The team is now fully integrated within Amadeus and acts as an incubator for other travel intelligence products. We’ll keep you posted on the air traffic analysis we will produce on a regular basis as well as on the new prototypes we will develop with airconomy, to try to bring a different perspective to the travel industry.
In order for this study to be exhaustive, I would argue that the difference in route structure between North-America and Europe on the one hand, and Asia on the other hand, should be investigated and taken into consideration regarding growth figures. European destinations are predominantly connected using a Hub-and-Spoke network structure, whilst O&D flights are more common in Asia. Therefore, analyzing growth by only regarding by only measuring O&D traffic, in my opinion, does not provide a concise image of the future state of the aviation industry.
Thank you for your comments Matthijs.
There are many ways to reflect the state of the aviation market and measure growth, for example, we could focus on segment traffic vs O&D vs point of sale; number of passengers vs number of passenger kilometres vs airline revenues.
It is important to understand that the O&D data we have reported measures passengers travelling to a final destination. For example, if I fly from MAN-LON-HKG I am counted as one passenger departing Europe with a destination in Asia. The connecting leg in London is not counted, so the route structure should not impact the results shown.
The benefit of focusing on true O&D is that it enables us to better understand true traveller trends. For example, it would be misleading to say that traffic between MAN-LON is growing by x % if that passenger’s final destination is not LON but HKG.
Knowing the true O&D demand can facilitate an airline to make decisions about its network structure or the size of an aircraft assigned to a route; consequently these choices will help improve its performance.
Nevertheless, your point about there being different route structures between regions is interesting. I’ve pulled some additional data to look at this – the average connecting rate of the ten busiest airports in Asia is 19% compared with 32% for the top ten hubs in Europe. So our data agrees with your analysis that Asia is a much more point-to-point market than Europe. And in North America the hub and spoke model is even more prevalent: the average connecting rate for the top ten hubs in North America is 45%: way ahead of both Europe and Asia.
Do let us know if you need any further information.
- Cyril