YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has published its annual yearbook of the airline industry’s recent performance. The reports key findings include system-wide, airlines carried 3.1 billion passengers on scheduled services in 2013, an increase of 5.1% over the previous year, informs “Armenpress”

 Airlines in the Asia-Pacific region carried the largest number of passengers against any other region, 1 billion passengers – up 9.3%.

The US maintained the top position for the largest single air market in the world, in terms of total two-way traffic, both international and domestic. Four of the top five airlines ranked by total scheduled passengers were American, namely Delta, Southwest, United and American Airlines (China Southern rounded off the list).

 The top three international city-pairs were Hong Kong-Taipei, Dublin-London and Jakarta-Singapore; with Jeju-Seoul, Sapporo-Tokyo and Fukuoka-Tokyo big hitters for domestic routes. 

 Star Alliance remained the largest airline alliance in 2013, with 26.6% of total scheduled traffic (in revenue passenger kilometers, RPKs); followed by SkyTeam (20.1%) and Oneworld (15.4%).

 Globally, cargo experienced weak growth with freight ton kilometers up less than 2% compared to 2012. However, that was still a reversal of the 1.1% shrinkage over 2011.

 IATA’s director general and CEO, Tony Tyler, commented: “While the real price of air travel fell by 7.4%...(aviation’s) global economic impact is estimated at $2.4 trillion and its support 3.4% of global GDP.

 “By value, over a third of goods traded internationally are delivered by air and some 58.1 million jobs are supported by aviation.”