Asian airlines suffer 98% slump in June passenger traffic

[JAKARTA] Asian airlines carried only 724,000 international passengers in June, a 98 per cent slump from a year earlier, as restrictions on movement suppressed air travel, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) said.

Average passenger load factor was just 36.3 per cent, AAPA said in a statement on Tuesday. The group's director general, Subhas Menon, said the prospect of a recovery in the second half of the year is increasingly uncertain as governments grapple with a resurgence of infections and reimpose lockdowns.

"The industry is in a perilous condition," he said. "Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region are rapidly depleting cash reserves and incurring massive losses."

Asia-Pacific airlines carried 61 million passengers in the first half of the year, down 68 per cent from a year earlier as travel demand evaporated in the second quarter, Mr Menon said.

A Bloomberg gauge of Asia-Pacific airline stocks has slumped 35 per cent since mid-January, just before the virus emerged and carriers started to adjust their services.

BLOOMBERG