Outlook for Air Transport to the Year 2015 - FILT CGIL Foggia

Chapter 6FORECASTS OF AIRCRAFT MOVEMENTSTO THE YEAR 2015FACTORS AFFECTING AIRCRAFT MOVEMENTS1. The planning of aviation facilities and the development of aviation policies require assessment of futuretrends in aircraft movements as well as of passenger and freight traffic flows. This is becoming increasinglyimportant because of concerns over airport and airspace congestion in some regions. Aircraft movements havegrown steadily during most of the past decade, increasing the pressure on airport and air navigation services.Traffic declines since 2001 have somewhat eased this pressure in the regions concerned, but as traffic recovers,airport and airspace congestion are expected to build up again.2. The primary factor affecting the number of aircraft movements is the demand for passenger travel. Thepassenger traffic forecasts presented in the previous chapter are, therefore, key inputs to the aircraft movementforecasts.3. When passenger demand increases, air carriers can respond by scheduling extra flights, by using largeraircraft, or by managing higher load factors. During the 1970s, air carriers accommodated most of the growth indemand by introducing larger aircraft. As a result of both increasing aircraft size and improving load factors, thegrowth in aircraft movements was quite small in the 1970s despite rapid growth in passenger traffic. However, inthe 1980s, the trend in average aircraft size remained almost unchanged as airlines began to introduce more midsizeand smaller aircraft into their fleets. From the early 1990s, the average aircraft size began to decrease and inrecent years, especially in 2001 and 2002, the decline has been more pronounced. Past trends in average aircraftsize and average load factor for total world scheduled services (excluding the Commonwealth of IndependentStates) are illustrated in Figure 6-1.4. Gradual improvements in average load factors have resulted from marketing initiatives and yieldmanagement programmes, but there is evidence that the rate of improvement in load factors is slowing down.This is expected as the industry gradually approaches upper limits for load factors, which are partially determinedby periodic and random variations in demand. In recent years, due to traffic declines, some markets experiencedexceptionally low load factors. In order to remedy this situation, capacities were reduced on affected routes. Asthe load factors have begun to show signs of progressive improvement, it is expected that the world averagescheduled passenger load factor, which increased from 66 per cent in 1992 to 71 per cent in 2002, will rise toabout 73 per cent by 2015.5. The services provided by carriers to meet demand result from a large number of decisions concerningnetwork structure, aircraft types and service frequency. These decisions depend on factors such as the availabilityof traffic rights, the characteristics of alternative aircraft, and consumer preferences and trade-offs between priceand service quality. Despite the complexity of this process, it is possible to discern several key factors which arein part responsible for the observed change in the trend in average aircraft size and hence the relationship betweentraffic demand and aircraft movements.6. The first of these factors is the trend towards liberalization or deregulation in some important markets.Deregulation in the United States domestic airline markets began in 1978, followed by gradual liberalization of42