ICAO dampens expectations of passenger recovery

CANADA. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has revised down its expectations for a recovery of world airline passenger traffic, which has gathered pace since the SARS outbreak in early 2003.

“We expect that for 2004 the increase [in traffic] will be about +4%, and from 2005 and beyond the increase worldwide will be about +5%,” ICAO president Assad Kotaite told reporters on the sidelines of an aviation seminar. He did not offer any specific reason for the revision.

The Montreal-based agency said last August that traffic would rebound by +4.4% in 2004 and by +6.3% in 2005, after a decline in 2001 and two successive years of stagnation.

Total traffic – which consists of scheduled domestic, international and freight services – slipped by -2% in 2003, the ICAO said.

Last year was a turbulent time for the aviation industry, which had to weather the twin blows of SARS and the Iraq war. At the height of the SARS outbreak in May last year, international passenger traffic of airlines in the Asia Pacific region was barely half of that of a year earlier.

Kotaite said that the ICAO was supportive of inflight security measures introduced by the US to guard against hijackings, but improving security at airports through the use of advanced biometric scanning and passport reading machines were more pressing issues.

“The control should be fundamentally and mainly on the ground,” he said, adding that the organization would review aviation security measures at its meetings in March and September.

In the latest moves to improve airline security after the September 11 attacks in the US, Washington has ordered foreign airlines to put armed guards on some flights and wants access to world airlines’ booking records to help track suspects.

The ICAO, which establishes the standards and procedures of aviation safety and security, said its audit of 20 states last year showed that a lack of legislation, well-trained personnel and funding were hampering security efforts, particularly in developing countries.

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