The impact of the credit crisis on air traffic

Like most other sectors, aviation, too, rides the waves of economic cycles. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) calculated a one-off drop in passenger volumes of around 12% in 2008, with a 9% structural impact in subsequent years, as shown by Figure 5.

Figure 5 Job Market Analysis, Aviation Sectoral Plan — Figure 5: Sources: ICAO en IATA

Air cargo also saw a sharp downturn, with a structural impact, as shown by Figure 6.

Figure 6 Job Market Analysis, Aviation Sectoral Plan — Figure 6: Sources: ICAO and IATA

The Dutch aviation industry is increasingly feeling the global economic impact on aviation as a result of the fact that the Dutch aviation industry, with its small domestic market, is relatively heavily dependent on the rest of the world and, thus, more sensitive to economic cycles outside the Netherlands. For example, in the first quarter of 2009, international passenger services from the Netherlands fell by 10% over previous year. International air cargo transport in the Netherlands dropped sharply by 24% in the same period and the number of air transport movements by more than 12%. Such a decrease in volume had not been seen since World War II.

Table 3: Air transport movements, passenger and air cargo volume. Source: Statistics Netherlands. Adapted by: Programmabureau Luchtvaart.

Year	Air transport movements at Schiphol		Passenger volume at Schiphol		Air cargo volume at Schiphol (in tonnes)
2000	414,927	5.42%	39,270,610	7.81%	1,222,594	3.55%
2001	416,462	0.37%	39,309,441	0.10%	1,183,208	-3.22%
2002	401,385	-3.62%	40,587,562	3.25%	1,239,900	4.79%
2003	392,996	-2.09%	39,808,649	-1.92%	1,306,155	5.34%
2004	402,783	2.48%	42,425,392	6.57%	1,421,115	8.80%
2005	404,594	0.46%	44,077,539	3.89%	1,449,855	2.02%
2006	423,122	4.58%	45,988,966	4.34%	1,526,552	5.29%
2007	435,972	3.04%	47,744,748	3.82%	1,610,282	5.48%
2008	428,332	-1.75%	47,391,711	-0.74%	1,567,712	-2.64%
2009	391,265	-8.65%	43,523,110	-8.16%	1,286,369	-17.95%
2010	386,316	-1.26%	45,136,882	3.71%	1,512,251	17.56%
2011	420,245	8.78%	49,680,625	10.07%	1,523,803	0.76%
2012	423,405	0.75%	50,975,592	2.61%	1,483,446	-2.65%
2013	425,565	0.51%	52,527,699	3.04%	1,531,086	3.21%

Table 3 illustrates the sharp decline, especially in air cargo volume in 2008 and 2009, with passenger volume and air transport movements showing a more even upward curve. Recovery has been evident since 2010, although air cargo relapsed again in 2012. The table also clearly shows the varying impact of the credit crisis between air passenger and air cargo volume. These fluctuations have a major impact on the demand for labour, because the handling of both goods and passenger flows entails its ‘own’ kind of employment:

Fluctuations in passenger volume usually affect airport security (passenger screening), passenger services (such as catering, retail and check-in desk services) and government bodies such as the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service and the Dutch Border Police (Royal Netherlands Marechaussee).

Fluctuations in the volume of air cargo usually affect forwarders, air cargo handlers and transport companies (truckers), and the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration.

Employment arising from passenger flows is roughly triple that of employment arising from air cargo. Fluctuations between passenger flows and flows of goods regularly bring about the need for the substantial retraining of employees and their relocation from one segment to another. In order to mitigate the effects of such fluctuations, various airlines have retrained their employees in the past few years, relocating them from air cargo services to other sectors operating in the aviation industry, such as aircraft maintenance. As a result of the crisis, aircraft have in fact been taken in for maintenance at a faster than usual pace.

Table 3 also shows efficiency improvements over the past decade with regard to both the handling of passenger flows and air cargo flows. For example, passenger volume at Schiphol increased by 32.5% between 2002 and 2012 and cargo volume by 20%, although a mere 6.7% additional employees were needed. At the same time, the number of air transport movements has increased by 5.7% in the past decade, which testifies to the emergence of larger aircraft types and improved utilisation rates since 2002.

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