The airline industry in the Middle East and North Africa is being affected negatively by the political unrest. IATA's regional Director discusses with Amirah Ibrahim possible opportunities to recover In a recent statement, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said that air traffic results have showed an increase of 6.8 per cent in passenger traffic over May 2010. It said the increase was 4 per cent higher than the beginning of the year. "We saw positive developments for the air transport volumes in May. International passenger load factors rebounded by 0.8 percentage points to 75.8 per cent. Freight volumes improved by 1.2 per cent over April and passenger volumes were up by 1.8 per cent. These will help to alleviate some of the pressure on profits from continued high fuel prices," said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA's director general and CEO. "But there are risks associated with political unrest in the Middle East crisis. We still expect the industry to make $4 billion this year. That is a pathetic 0.7 per cent margin and another shock could alter the industry's fortunes dramatically. It's another tough year for a very fragile industry," said Bisignani. Speaking exclusively to Al-Ahram Weekly, MENA IATA Regional Director Majidi explained that the association had to reduce its forecasts of profits from $900 million to $109 million in 2011. "The unrest and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa region have not only affected the national airlines of those countries, but also hit the operation by foreign airlines to the region," highlighted. "Political unrest is one of the most difficult challenges that hit air traffic and tourism. When it comes to violent acts and unrest, Western tourists do not distinguish between one place and another in the Middle East. They just quit the whole region. For Egypt and Tunisia, if they are lucky enough, they can recover and retrieve traffic by next autumn on the condition that political stability is reached soon," added. IATA's figures show that African airlines' international traffic increased 1.1 per cent over the previous year. "Travel markets to the region had been depressed by the impact of political unrest in Egypt and Tunisia. Flights to these two destinations are still about 20 per cent down," stated. However, indicated, a significant 2.2 per cent improvement in the load factor for the month does show initial signs of improvement. As such, Middle East carriers grew international traffic by 7.8 per cent over May 2010, slightly below a 9.6 per cent capacity expansion that saw load factors slip to 70.8 per cent. While political unrest continues to have a dramatic impact on several of the region's smaller markets, the overall impact on the region's carriers is very limited. Carriers in all regions except Latin America (up 1.5 per cent) and the Middle East (up 8.1 per cent) saw air freight declines compared to May 2010. Declines by African carriers (down 7.8 per cent) reflected the disruption in Egypt and Tunisia. According to , MENA airlines face two challenges, both against European policies. criticised the European Emission Trade Scheme (ETS) set to be implemented from 2012. "IATA is against ETS because we believe that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is the only place where such issue should have been discussed," explained. "If it is the decision of each government to impose new taxes, air transport will never make it. We are for adopting a unified programme to protect the global environment; an international scheme agreed by governments within the ICAO framework," added. On the other hand, indicated, we are also against Europe's exaggeration to blacklist African airlines. "Europe's blacklist now includes 22 African airlines. This is no solution. It does not help the industry to blacklist an airline. They rather should promote more support to improve safety; providing more advanced navigation systems to airports, help aviation authorities to improve service standards and help more airlines to join IOSA programmes." According to , all 235 IATA member airlines are IOSA certified while other 120 non-IATA members have also obtained IOSA. According to , industry priorities for 2011 are to maintain safety so as to promote IATA safety databases and information sharing forums available through the Global Safety Information Centre. They also include supporting regional transition to the new ICAO Flight Plan format among member airlines in accordance with IATA's position. MENA IATA carries out a number of missions, including to support Fuel Efficiency Gap Analysis initiatives and their implementation, assist States and Air Navigation Service Providers in implementation of Performance Based Navigation. "In line with the IATA e-services project, we target to help the MENA region to achieve Airlines Electronic Miscellaneous Documents capabilities by the end of 2012." pointed to the Deploying Quality Programme in Africa and the Middle East and prepations for certification of operations in 2012. IATA MENA also works to provide a wide range of products and services that support various functions in the industry, including support of the Pilot Training Initiative and multi-crew pilot licensing.
