Mideast airlines achieve 7.8% growth

Middle East carriers achieved 7.8 per cent growth in May over the same month last year, according to the statistics released yesterday by global trade body the International Air Transport Association. It revealed the region grew slightly below a 9.6 per cent capacity expansion that saw load factors for Middle Eastern carriers slipping to 70.8 per cent. Besides the geo-political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, the growth of the region's carriers has also been slowed by volatile oil prices and the natural disaster in Jap-an in March. "While political unrest continues to have a dram-atic impact on several of the region's smaller markets, the overall impact on the region's carriers is very limited," Geneva-based IATA said in a statement. Globally, however, traffic demand grew in May on volumes while risk persisted. IATA said passenger traffic in May surged 6.8 per cent from May 2010, marking a four per cent increase from the beginning of the year. Freight traffic, on the other hand, suffered a four per cent drop against the post-recession peak of the re-stocking cycle in May 2010, IATA said, adding that recent months showed a renewed upward trend with freight volumes two per cent higher than at the start of the year. International passenger load factors in May rebounded by 0.8 per centage point to 75.8 per cent. From / Gulf News