AEA member airlines carry 24 million more passengers in 2011
The Association of European Airlines (AEA) has today released its preliminary traffic figures for 2011, which indicate 7.1% growth in year-on-year passenger numbers. Over the full year, Europe's network airlines carried a total of 363 million passengers.
This provisional figure, covering 31 of AEA's 35 members, is 24 million up on 2010. Traffic (measured in RPKs) rose by 8%, but capacity growth (measured in ASKs) remained a step ahead at 8.9%.
This slight shortfall in demand caused AEA's average load factor to slip by 0.6 of a percentage point to 77.3%. Based on this positive traffic performance, AEA expects its member airlines to post a collective €1.5 billion EBIT profit in 2011, up from €0.5 billion in 2010.