First revival signs on regular airlines market

The three biggest regular airlines on the Romanian market in terms of the number of passengers, Tarom, Lufthansa group and Carpatair, last year transported 3.7 million passengers overall, almost 20% more than in 2009.
The figures mark a rebound compared with 2009, when traffic operated by the state-owned carrier and Petrov’s company had registered a two-digit contraction. As regards Lufthansa, it started reporting the cumulated figures of the three companies it includes (Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Swiss) in 2010.
Though regular airlines described 2010 as a “challenging” year, the figures announced by the biggest companies on this market pointed to rising demand for travel by plane.
Traditional companies targeted rising passenger traffic, plane loading degree and implicitly higher market shares.
So far, foreign airlines Air France KLM, Malev, British Airways, Alitalia and others have not published their traffic data.
Nevertheless, in line with ZF estimates, the regular airline market could have topped 4 million passengers last year.