Global air passenger traffic in July continued to show solid growth, at 8% year-on-year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has reported. IATA is the global representative body for the airline industry.

“July was another positive month,” affirmed IATA director-general Willie Walsh. “In fact, passenger demand hit an all-time high for the industry and in all regions except Africa, despite significant disruption caused by the Crowdstrike IT outage.”

International passenger demand was up 10.1%, while domestic passenger demand rose 4.8%, over the same period. Total global passenger capacity increased by 7.4%, while international capacity rose by 10.5% and domestic capacity improved by 2.8%. The total global load factor in July was 86%, a 0.5 percentage point (ppt) increase, year-on-year. The load factor for international flights was 85.9%, which was a -0.3 ppt decrease compared with July 2023. The domestic load factor, however, rose by 1.7 ppt to 86.1%, year-on-year.

“People need and want to fly,” he highlighted. “And they are doing that in great numbers. Load factors are at the practical maximum. But persistent supply chain bottlenecks have made deploying the capacity to meet the need to travel more challenging. As much of the world returns from vacation, there is an urgent call for manufacturers and suppliers to resolve their supply chain issues so that air travel remains accessible and affordable to all those who rely on it.”

The region which saw the strongest year-on-year air passenger growth in July was the Asia-Pacific, at 12%. It was followed by Latin America, at 7.5%, and Europe (7.2%). Then came Africa (6.6%), the Middle East (6.1%) and North America (4.9%).

Regarding just international demand, the region that recorded the greatest increase was again the Asia-Pacific, at 19.1%. Indeed, the order was identical with that for total air passenger growth, above, with Latin America in second place (13.4%), then Europe (8.3%), Africa (7.4%), the Middle East (5.8%) and North America (5.3%).

The six major domestic air travel markets regularly tracked by IATA are Australia, Brazil, China, India, Japan, and the US. All these markets showed “solid” year-on-year growth in July, with all, except India, recording record-high demand. The market that showed the fastest growth was Brazil, at 8.9%. Second came India, with 7.7%, followed by China (7.1%), the US (5%), Japan (4%) and Australia (2.6%).