Premium Air Traffic Takes an Unexpected Turn for the Worse

(MoneyWatch)  The September IATA Premium Traffic Monitor is out, and the news is not what I expected. Premium traffic air travel comparisons actually looked worse than in August, but what remains to be seen is whether this is an anomaly or a sign of a changing trend.

Last month in my review of the August IATA report, I said "Last September is when the numbers really began to fall of a cliff, so you would hope that the year-over-year comparisons would become significantly more favorable." Not so much.

Premium travel was down 13.9 percent year over year in September. That accelerated from a 12 percent decline in August. The reason this is alarming is that last September is when traffic started to really fall off. That's why I would have thought year over year comparisons would have improved, but they haven't. Take a look.

While Asian routes had seen some of the worst pain, those seem to be improving while US routes do not. For example, Europe to Asia is down 9.8 percent year over year while North Pacific is down 10.5 percent. Those numbers are better than we've seen previously. On the North Atlantic, however, premium traffic was down 10.7 percent, and that's not great.

I know I said that September would be the bellwether, but now we need to look to October to see if September was simply an anomaly or a shift in the trend.