Airlines Still Struggle to Get Back on Pre-Gulf War Track

The world’s airlines are still struggling to return to steady growth after the steep decline caused by the Persian Gulf War last year, official figures released Thursday showed.

The International Air Transport Assn., representing 205 airlines worldwide, said passenger traffic in the first quarter of 1992 was only 8% higher than the same period two years ago.

Freight traffic growth was even lower, at only 2% above the figures for January-March, 1990, IATA reported.

“The airlines are not yet back on a firm, long-term growth path,” the association’s director general, Gunther Eser, said in a statement.

An IATA spokesman said that, in normal times, passenger traffic could have been expected to grow by 12% over a two-year period and freight by 10% to 11%.

“What we are seeing is the continued effects of the war and also of the economic recession,” the spokesman said.

“Passenger traffic has not bounced back as fully as we would have expected, and the situation with freight is quite bad because the recession is limiting shipment of traded goods.”

But the IATA figures also showed a continuing, if unsteady, recovery in passenger traffic compared to the first quarter of 1991, when the Gulf War was raging and causing widespread disruption in the industry.