(Source: Bloomberg & Livemint.com)

Global airline passenger traffic fell 10 percent last month, the steepest decline since the recession began, led by a plunge in long-haul travel.

The decline, gathering pace from a 5.6 percent fall in year-on-year traffic in January, included a 12.8 percent reduction in passengers flown by Asia-Pacific carriers and a 12 percent drop among North American airlines, the International Air Transport Association said today in a statement.

While passenger numbers continued to deteriorate, the pace of declines in the freight market leveled out. International freight volumes were down 22.1 percent from a year ago, compared with drops of 23.2 percent drop in January and 22.6 percent in December, IATA said.

:  “Freight traffic, which began its decline in June 2008 before passenger markets were hit, has now had three consecutive months in the minus 22 to minus 23% range,” IATA added, says the Livemint.com (WSJ) article.

Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general, said: “We may have found a bottom to the freight decline, but the magnitude of the drop means that it will take time to recover.”  But even as freight traffic stabilises, airlines are now feeling the squeeze in passenger traffic.

(Source: Yahoo Travel;  Photo Coutesy: TSA)

 TSA Adds a New Twist to Passenger Screening

(Source: USA Today)

Air travelers stand to be the beneficiaries of “ridiculously low” airfares as fare wars break out among U.S. airlines desperate to fill seats amid sagging demand. Even those hoping to travel during the peak-period summer months stand to benefit, according to the Los Angeles Times. The paper writes that “fares for summer trips are often among the highest of the year and start rising in the spring, but not this year. With business travel plummeting, airlines are pulling back and offering some of the lowest-priced plane tickets in recent memory.”

TransportGooru recommends all readers to listen to this interesting coverage on NPR.

(Source:  NPR)

 President Obama’s economic stimulus package includes $8 billion for speeding up train travel. America is far behind other industrial countries in high speed rail. A few years ago, Spain was also behind the curve. But the Spanish network is expanding fast, and the trains are beating planes.

(Source: Wired Magazine, Transportation for America, Streetsblog)

From Wired Magazine via Aaron of Streetsblog comes this amazing map and video that shows a day of air travel over North America. Using data from the Federal Aviation Administration and a service called FlightView that tracks airline travel each day, artist Aaron Koblin created this Google map that shows 24 hours of airline travel on August 12, 2008.

There’s also a breathtaking movie version of this same map, that shows the flights in real time through the course of the day.

The sheer number of airplanes traveling over the United States is simply mind boggling. On this day chronicled in the map, the FAA tracked 205,000 flights in U.S. airspace. Anyone who has ever traveled by plane knows that we have plenty of air above our country, but the problem is the fact that too many of them need to be in specific pieces of air at the same time. Or traveling through the same crowded airports.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Reuters – UK)

US Airways Group (LCC.N) on Monday said it would stop charging for nonalcoholic drinks in its coach cabin, a practice that drew the ire of customers and put the airline at a competitive disadvantage.

US Airways’ retreat from the fee also may show that there is a limit to how far cash-strapped carriers can push travelers who have suffered fee after fee for items and services that once were complimentary.

Starting March 1, US Airways will no longer charge for in-flight soda, juice, tea, water and coffee. But the airline said it remains committed to its so-called “a la carte” model, which is now common throughout the industry.

“US Airways was the only large network carrier to charge for drinks, and that put us at a disadvantage,” Chief Executive Doug Parker said in a statement.

(Source: stltoday.com)

Believe it or not, you had a better chance of reaching your flight destination on time last year than in 2007 because major airlines are cutting back their schedules.

Passengers flying in and out of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport benefited as well, according to annual numbers published this month by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Slightly more than 77 percent of inbound flights reached Lambert on time in 2008, compared to just under 75 percent in 2007. Nationally, about 76 percent of flights operated by the 19 largest airlines landed on time last year.

Slightly less than 70 percent of flights left St. Louis on time in both years — with a slight improvement in 2008.

Flight cancellations also dropped last year compared to 2007.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Seattle Times

Boeing delivered the first freighter version of its 777 jet Thursday to Air France Cargo, and the airline said it is deferring deliveries of two of the five such freighters it has on order as it copes with the global economic downturn.

Air France Cargo picked up the keys Thursday for the first of a new breed of big, modern twin-engine cargo jets: the 777 freighter.

As French airline officials, Boeing executives and guests sipped Champagne and milled around the airplane at Paine Field, the second 777 freighter in the same colors took off on a test flight. It will be delivered next week.

But the celebratory air in Everett was marred by the widening global economic downturn. In an interview, Pierre Vellay, Air France executive vice president for fleet development, said the air-transport business is “in very bad shape.”

To read the entire article, click here.

(Obtained via Reuters)

GENEVA, Feb 19 (Reuters) – More than 500 people died in air crashes on Western-built jets in 2008 and safety lapses at airlines contributed to nearly a third of accidents, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said.

The toll of 502 was down from 2007, when 692 died, but the number of crashes rose slightly.

The 2008 industry-wide accident rate, measured in hull losses per million flights, was 0.81, or one accident every 1.2 million flights. This compared with 0.75 in 2007.

“Runway excursions”, when an aircraft left the runway on take-off or landing, accounted for one-quarter of accidents last year and ground damage was reported in another 17 percent, according to IATA on Thursday.

By Andy Palanisamy