APAC leads air passenger growth in 2015: IATA

Asia-Pacific continues to dominate global air passenger traffic growth, according to 2015 industry performance statistics released by IATA in its 60^th Edition of the World Air Transport Statistics.

Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region once again carried the largest number of passengers at 1.2 billion last year, rising 10 per cent from 2014, to account for a 34 per cent market share.

Overall, airlines carried 3.6 billion passengers on scheduled services, an increase of 7.2 per cent over 2014 to represent an additional 240 million air trips.

India saw the fastest passenger growth of 18.8 per cent in 2015 with an annual growth of 18.8 per cent in a market of 80 million domestic passengers, surpassing Russia's 11.9 per cent growth (47 million domestic passengers), China's 9.7 per cent growth (394 million domestic passengers) and the US' 5.4 per cent growth (708 million domestic passengers).

The top five international/regional passenger airport-pairs all reside within Asia-Pacific: Hong Kong-Taipei (5.1 million, up 2.1 per cent from 2014), Jakarta-Singapore (3.4 million, down 2.6 per cent), Bangkok Suvarnabhumi-Hong Kong (three million, up 29.2 per cent), Kuala Lumpur–Singapore (2.7 million, up 13 per cent) and Hong Kong-Singapore (2.7 million, down 3.2 per cent).

As well, the top five domestic passenger airport-pairs were also all in the Asia-Pacific region, led by Jeju-Seoul Gimpo (11.1 million, up 7.1 per cent over 2014), followed by Sapporo-Tokyo Haneda (7.8 million, up 1.3 per cent), Fukuoka-Tokyo Haneda (7.6 million, down 7.4 per cent), Melbourne Tullamarine-Sydney (7.2 million, down 2.2 per cent) and Beijing Capital-Shanghai Hongqiao (6.1 million, up 6.1 per cent) respectively.

-TTG Asia.