The International Air Transport Association (Iata), the representative body of the world’s airlines, on Wednesday released its first monthly global passenger demand data for this year, covering January. This provides the first data on the effects of the Covid-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak on the industry.

Passenger demand is measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs), and total demand in January rose by 2.3% in comparison to January 2019. However, RPKs in December 2019 increased by 4.6% in comparison to December 2018. And the January 2020 increase was the lowest monthly rise since April 2010 (when air travel to, from and within Europe was severely disrupted by huge volcanic ash clouds which erupted from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland).

“January was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the traffic impacts we are seeing owing to the Covid-19 outbreak, given that major travel restrictions in China did not begin until 23 January,” cautioned Iata director-general and CEO Alexandre de Juniac. “Nevertheless, it was still enough to cause our slowest traffic growth in nearly a decade.” Airline capacity in January rose by 1.7%, and airliner load factor by 0.6% to 80.3%. (Load factor is the proportion of revenue-generating seats on an airliner that are sold.)

Asia-Pacific airlines saw a year-on-year increase of 2.5% in their international passenger demand in January. But this was a fall in relation to the 3.9% rise recorded in December. This was partly owing to the impact of Covid-19 on international traffic to and from China, but also because of weaker economic growth in a number of the region’s major economies.

However, Chinese domestic air passenger demand dropped by 6.8% in January, as a consequence of Covid-19-related travel restrictions and flight cancellations. Iata noted that the Chinese Ministry of Transport had reported an annual fall of 80% in passenger volumes in late January and early February.

The regions least affected by Covid-19 in January were Africa and the Middle East. African airlines’ international passenger traffic grew by 5.3% that month, a slight rise over the 5.1% increase in December. African airlines’ capacity grew by 5.7%, but their load factor declined by 0.3% to 70.5%.

“The Covid-19 outbreak is a global crisis that is testing the resilience not only of the airline industry but of the global economy,” stressed De Juniac. “Airlines are experiencing double-digit declines in demand, and on many routes traffic has collapsed. Aircraft are being parked and employees are being asked to take unpaid leave.”