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Travel appears to be uneffected by Bali bomb blasts

The Bali bomb blasts do not appear to have had a noticeable impact on air travel in Asia, industry figures said yesterday.

"There appear to be no major implications, apart from a redeployment of traffic to other destinations perceived as being safe," said Jean Louis Morisot, vice president Asia-Pacific investment research at investment bank Goldman Sachs.

More than 190 people were killed most of them tourists, when a massive car bomb exploded in the tourist resort of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali on Oct. 12.

"It would take a lot to derail the global tourism industry," Morisot added in a speech to the Asia Pacific Aviation Management Roundtable, organized by the Economist.

As for the outlook for the Asian aviation industry as a whole, Morisot said economy class traffic was recovering well compared with last year and supply was restrained relative to economic growth, in contrast to the "lost decade" of the 1990s when airlines expanded massively to increase market share.

A halt in capital expenditure, a willingness to join global airline alliances and relatively strong balance sheets meant that "Asia would be spared in the near term" the problems facing many US and European carriers, he said.

The outlook for air cargo -- which Morisot said had a remarkable year in 2002, rescuing the whole industry -- had shifted to "cautious to negative" with prospects beyond the end of the peak period in December uncertain.

Hong Kong-based carrier Cathay Pacific has reduced its weekly flights to Bali to seven from 10 but "so far, there has been no reduction in demand on other Asian routes," said Andrew Herdman, director corporate affairs at Swire Pacific, Cathay's parent company.

"Bali will have a cold Christmas, but I think we will be surprised by the bounceback in 2003," said Peter de Jong, president and chief executive of the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association.
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