PARIS- U.S. air fares are approaching a 40% decline and still falling while ticket pricing in Europe and Asia is bottoming out, according to data published on Thursday by Skytra, an Airbus-owned airline-hedging business.
In the face of a widespread grounding of flights and coronavirus travel restrictions, airlines are offering heavy discounts on the services they are still running.
Average fares for flights within the U.S.-dominated North America region are down 37.8% since Jan. 1 despite very low traffic, according to a rolling average of economy fares as of April 15, extending the 28.8% plunge recorded a week earlier.
The year-to-date decline in intra-European fares, by contrast, improved slightly to 20.7% from 22%, while the average drop in Asia Pacific narrowed to 13% from 14.4%.
Average yields - a proxy for fares expressed in revenue per passenger kilometre - dropped to 9.3 U.S. cents in North America from 15.2 cents a year earlier. In Europe they fell to 14.2 cents from 19.9 cents. In Asia-Pacific they slipped to 9.7 cents from 11.9 cents.
(Reporting by Laurence Frost Editing by David Goodman ) ((laurence.frost@thomsonreuters.com; +33 1 4949 5683 @Laurence_Frost; Reuters Messaging: N/A))
