Premiun Traffic Monitor - April 2014

We are pleased  present you  IATA's assessment of premium and economy travel in April.

Key points:

·  Premium travel was up 3.8% in April year-on-year, an acceleration on March growth of 1.9%;

·  Demand drivers have been wavering over recent months, but now appear to be stabilizing; 

·  Advanced economies continue to see stronger improvements than emerging markets;

·  But May data shows that recent declines in business activity in China could now be reversing;

·  Route-level results indicate a pick-up in the Far East market, which rose 7.2% in April, compared to 1.6% in March; 

·  Markets connected to the Middle East also performed strongly, but this is in line with performance so far this year;

·  Gulf economies are recording strong increases in business confidence with robust performance of non-oil producing sectors;

·  This supports demand growth on markets like Far East–Middle East (11.5%), Europe–Middle East (8.6%) and Africa–Middle East (12.3%);

·  The outlook for premium travel is positive, with business confidence showing a small rise in May after slowdown prior months.

View full report (pdf)