Premium Travel Falls Off a Cliff

(MoneyWatch)  It used to be fun to watch IATA's premium traffic monitor because the numbers mostly went up. As you can imagine, that's not the case any more.

IATA released September premium traffic numbers and overall, premium traffic is down 8%. Economy traffic was only down 4%, so premium is really the hardest hit. Check out this chart.

Oh, is that news not bad enough for you? Along with the drop, revenue growth ended up being barely positive. Since there's little doubt that these numbers will continue to go down, IATA expects to see negative premium revenue growth soon enough.

But don't worry, it's not as dire as it may seem for US carriers in the international world. On the North Atlantic, traffic was only down 2% and North America to South America was actually up 3.9%. On the other hand, North America to Central America dropped 6.9% and domestic flying was down just over 10%.

This combined with Delta already signally that demand was dropping all around means that it's once again belt tightening time for airlines, even though oil has dropped $100 a barrel in the last few months.