European airlines carry 7% more passengers in 2011

The AEA has announced their preliminary figures for 2011 traffic and they are indicating a good year, at least compared to 2010. Of course, 2010 was a year fraught with events that challenged European aviation, but now the positive message of the day is passenger growth! See the announcement here.

There is only one problem here: at what price? Too many people are blindly focused on passenger figures. "How many seats are filled?" "How many people did you carry?" "What was your load factor?" In essence, who cares! Passenger figures are only side to the calculation. It's price that we should really care about. It's the easiest thing in the world to fill airplane seats; it's another thing to fill airplane seats AND make a profit! This goes for any business. Who cares how many iPods Apple sells! I want to know how many iPods were sold at what price. The announcement says nothing about the yield that the airlines were getting. If European airlines were filling their seats at a loss then that's bad business.

Survey results are published by Association of European Airlines

The AEA has published a summary of the survey results from the global questionnaire regarding innovation and imitation in the industry in their quarterly publication, AEA Source. Click here. The association was extremely helpful with their assistance regarding the survey and I am indebted to the organization. They helped with contacting their members which ensured that I obtained the necessary results. A link to the publication is here. I recommend to browse past issues as there are interesting topics that are researched.