The Calgary Airport Authority has posted the passenger numbers from April and May of this year and to no surprise the numbers continue to be lower then last year. In fact the numbers for these months are even lower then the same two months in 2007. Many analysts have said that we have hit the bottom of this economic downturn so perhaps we will see a rise in the numbers in the coming months. If this happens I would think the numbers will still be down from 2008 but not in 5-8% range like we are currently seeing, perhaps only 2-3%. However, that being said, I am also involved in the Oil and Gas Industry, and many of my colleagues agree that if the price of natural gas doesn't move up, we will continue on with "things being slow" and as much as Calgary likes to believe that it has diversified, Oil and Gas is still the biggest player and is the benchmark for how this city fairs economically.
Here are YYC's overall passenger numbers for April and May
April 985,626 (-5.2%)
May 956,339 (-7.9%)
Broken down by sector:
Domestic
April 677,459 (-6.5%)
May 698,565 (-8.7%)
Transborder
April 208,088 (3.5%)
May 177,580 (-5.3%)
International
April 100,079 (-11.7%)
May 80,194 (-7.0%)
Is their a light at the end of the tunnel? I sure hope so, Air Travel is usually quite a good indicator of how a country or economy is fairing, and right now the numbers are not promising but there seems to be some positive signs emerging. Thanks to a thread on Airliners.net about how KLM's YYC-AMS flight is doing, I have been watching passenger loads for the flight on Amadeus.net (KLM is one of only a few who post their PAX numbers on here) and a few weeks ago most of the flights had around 150 passengers, but each flight this week coming from Amsterdam has had over 240 on a plane that seats 251. I know one week is not enough to gauge an economic turnaround but I will continue to watch this flight to see if these numbers stay up in that range throughout the summer and beyond.
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