The sales of traditional companies on the local market reached 416.7 million euros last year, 12 percent more than in the previous year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The low-cost airline market was about half the traditional airline market last year, considering the only operator on this segment three years ago was local airline Blue Air.
The low-cost operators Blue Air, Wizz Air, MyAir, Sky Europe, Germanwings, easyJet and Ryanair transported about 2.5 million passengers to and from Romania, while regular airlines reached an over 6 million passenger figure on the local market, according to an IATA survey. With its impressive traffic growth, Romania followed the lead of Poland, which, three years after its European Union accession saw its airline traffic double.
The impressive progression of the last few years could be slowed down by the financial crisis, which causes travel budget cuts.
However, both low-cost and regular airlines continued to budget growth on the local market.
"I don't think we'll see decline compared with the past years, though we will not see the spectacular growth we used to, either," said Anca Apahidean, country manager of IATA Romania. Traditional airlines witnessed the first declines in sales on the Romanian market in the last few months of last year, after such drops had been recorded worldwide since September.
"We had recorded 17 percent growth after the first nine months of last year, yet due to the trend of the last quarter, the full-year growth stood at 12 percent," said Anca Apahidean, who added that the value of the tickets sold in 2008 stood at 416.7 million euros.
IATA tracks the sales of the airlines through the Billing Settlement Plan system, which is used for more than 80 percent of the sales of the traditional airlines.
After a higher than expected growth in the first nine months of the year, the October increase stood at merely 7.37 percent and November and December came with declines.
"We've seen decline in the total sales through the BSP Romania and Moldova since November, which is unheard of, since the Romanian market had been constantly growing," Apahidean said.
The sales of traditional companies fell by 11.26 percent in November compared with the same month of the previous year. Decline in December stood at 8.94 percent.
TAROM, the leading operator on the local market posted about 10 percent decline in traffic, company representatives said.
Although the traditional airline market posted its first declines, the estimates of the operators for this year include further development on the local market.
Malev will introduce its first flights from Iasi to Budapest, Lufthansa will operate flights from Bucharest to Milan and Air France KLM is considering, together with TAROM, the introduction of flights from Cluj to Paris and from Bucharest to Lyon.
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