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Sept. 11 attack effects to be felt by air industry for years
Source: Manila Bulletin
Author: None
Date: 2002-03-17
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The impact of the dramatic drop in US air traffic due to the combined wallop of recession and the Sept. 11 hijack attacks will be felt well into the next decade, the government announced yesterday.







The Federal Aviation Administration, in an annual economic forecast unveiled last Tuesday,has predicted that air travel should return to its pre-Sept. 11 levels later this year or early next, barring any new terrorist attacks or unforeseen national economic weakness.





Recovery will vary from airline to airline and from airport to airport, the agency’s economic analysis found. And it said big carriers would have to lower fares and become more competitive to fill seats and reverse staggering losses.





Moreover, the forecast found it would take until the end of next year for commercial airlines to again allow themselves to expect “more normal” patterns of annual growth, around 4 percent. The FAA said this trend should continue for the next 10 years after that.





The FAA also pushed back by three years, to fiscal year 2013, its projection for when the industry would reach the magic number of 1 billion passengers per year.





The threshold is considered key by industry and policy makers for budget purposes and for planning enhancements to aviation systems.





FAA economists expect passenger volume for domestic and international travel on US airlines to reach 601.5 million people this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. That compares with 682 million last year, down almost 12 percent for the period, and closer to 1995 levels than the highs of 2000.





The latest passenger traffic figures, which include 682 million for fiscal 2003, reflect a dramatic shift in short-term thinking on aviation.





A year ago, the industry was consumed by mounting delays and congestion and unveiled the billion-passenger target with a mix of pride and anxiety.





Now, commercial airlines are trying to emerge from the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and figure out a faster way to get passengers through airport check-in and security lines.





Last year, air travelers might have sat on a runway or circled an airport for an hour, now they might stand in a baggage screening or ticket line for that long.





But the FAA, which manages the flow of air traffic, says it is still concerned with longer-term questions about the system’s ability to handle growth.





“Regardless of the short-term decline in air traffic, our forecast underscores the need for the government and the aviation industry to continue adding capacity to our system to meet the demand that will return and grow,” FAA Administrator Jane Garvey said.





Capacity, the measure of how crowded the skies are, has been slashed since September by airlines who have parked hundreds of commercial jets in the desert because there has been no need to use them.





Commercial operations, including big jets and regional carriers, are off more than 11 percent at 31 busy airports since October.





But the major carriers are faring worse overall, especially at hub airports where the big airlines route passengers to connecting flights.





For instance, commercial service for big jets is off 15 percent at Chicago O’Hare, 23 percent at Newark, 20 percent in Dallas, and 22 percent in Los Angeles. At New York’s LaGuardia, the most congested airport in the country in recent years, operations for big airlines is down 28 percent.

 

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