CarolynUK

The thing that is equally important to airlines is how much revenue those premium passengers generate.

On some flights the smaller number of Premium passengers will have paid more in total than all of those in economy!

Tchiowa

Yes. And the comparison in profit is even greater.

RadioGirl

The graph in the OP would have gotten an "A" in the "Lying with statistics" module when I used to teach Practical Mathematics.

onobond

Looking at both graphs together reveals that premium passengers in absolute numbers have increased from the year before recession (1998) til now with roughly 10%.

Doing a table-ish thing:

Premium: 2008 5.2M; 2009 4.1M = -20%; 2015 5.7M = +10% from -08, but c:a +40% from -09.

Economy: 2008 73M; 2009 71M = -2.5%; 2015 94M = +28.7% from -08, but c:a +32.4% from -09


Scrolling down on the IATA document to page 4 the traffic growth Mar -14 to Mar -15 was +4.4% in premium, +4.6% in economy, +4.6% in total


Still worried?

Kagehitokiri

the interesting thing is when airlines discuss percentages in financial statements

there have been posts about that on FT

YOWgary

Ah, so it's an industry sales group, using skewed charts to... not really predict anything one way or the other.

Seriously, the whole thrust of that piece seems to be "things could get a little better... but then again they might not."

belfordrocks

shuigao

Anecdotally, the company I work for (MNC, ~80,000 employees) did just that. Travel policy was downgraded such that only really senior people get to fly business; everyone else flies Economy. Policy is in place til now -- it sucks really bad to fly 10-12 hour long hauls in Y regularly.

Hengilas

IMO that is just cruel unless you have a couple days to catch up on sleep/recover from a flight like that built into the trip.

GrayAnderson

There are two charts on the page in the IATA report that was linked. The chart we have here shows percentages of the whole while the one we don't have shows total numbers.

Looking at the total numbers, premium passenger counts (not sure of the definition, but I'm guessing F/J) sat at about 5.3m/month in early 2008. There was a crash to about 4.0m/month at the bottom of the recession (putting the number at about 75% of the peak level). Numbers rebounded, reaching pre-recession levels in about 2013; current levels are at about 5.6m (although flattening). FWIW, there's a slower flattening of economy travel going on as well.

Doing my best to interpret this, I think a lot of the non-comeback is down to higher load factors in economy on the same planes plus Premium Economy helping to take some demand load off of "actual premium" travel (and, in some cases, allowing Economy itself to get downgraded). The recent slowing in Economy demand is simply load factors getting maxed out.

ren0312

Are you allowed to fly premium economy?

lhrsfo

From a European perspective, and ignoring Premium Economy initially, two things have been going on. Airlines like BA have been adding higher biz class ratio seating as the economy has recovered in their long haul fleets. But shorthaul, the likes of FR, EZ, 4U etc have continued to grow, with no biz class available, and the premium airlines are tending to have smaller biz cabins to reflect that. This would be entirely consistent with the number of emplanements in Biz being a lower percentage, but the number of miles flown showing a lower, or even opposite, effect.

As to Premium Economy, I'm not sure there's any sensible way of measuring that, since even now it means such a different thing to different airlines.