The global aviation market should book profits of up to US$4 billion this year after losing more than US$30 billion since 2000, with passenger traffic in the Asia-Pacific region expected to grow at twice the world growth rate, industry leaders said yesterday.
Passenger traffic in the region is tipped to increase 14 percent this year after declining 9.4 percent last year because of the SARS outbreak, said Giovanni Bisignani, director-general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
This is double the projected rise in global passenger traffic of 7 percent this year from a 2.4 percent slump last year, he said in a speech on the final day of an IATA-sponsored aviation conference here.
"Without surprises, 2004 will be better," Bisignani said, adding that global profit this year could range between US$2 billion and US$4 billion.
In regards to the region, he said: "Asia Pacific is a vital part of our industry. The future holds great things for Asia Pacific and for our industry."
But Bisignani, along with other industry leaders who spoke at the conference, urged airlines and their business partners to step up the pace of reforms if the aviation sector is to realize its growth potential.
In particular, Bisignani said governments must bear the extra costs arising from increased security measures implemented to guard against terrorist acts following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US.
The extra cost of airlines' compliance to the new security measures totalled more than US$5 billion since the attacks.
"There is no argument that airlines must bear the cost of ordinary aviation security. But the situation is now extraordinary ... in many cases we are being asked to pay for what is national security," he said.
"This is not fair and must change. Our target is to get governments to accept the extraordinary cost of security ... like they do for any other national security issue."
Another area which also needs to be looked at again is the tendency for airlines to want to dominate every segment of the industry, he said.
This practice more often than not tended to work against the carriers, said Tony Fernandes, founder and chief executive of the popular Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia.
"I feel airlines and governments have caused a lot of the problems that [they're] in themselves.
"Airlines generally are not focused ... they try to do everything and try to control every part of the market in many ways. And in my three years, I have found it absolutely impossible to try do anything else but stay focused on our core business."
Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, shared Bisignani's upbeat assessments of the region's aviation industry prospects.
But he said it would require governments to liberalize the aviation sector and increase competition.
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