TORONTO – It’s another year of solid H1 growth, says IATA’s Air Passenger Market Analysis for June, but upward momentum has slowed in light of extremist attacks and moderate economic growth.

According to the report, industry-wide revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) grew by 6.0% year-on-year in the first half of 2016, slightly up from the 5.9% increase in the same period in 2015. Annual growth in RPKs ticked up to 5.2% in June, from an upwardly-revised 4.8% in May.

However, IATA notes that over the past few months, there are ongoing signs that passenger growth has shifted down a gear.

The market has grown at an annualized rate of around 3.5% since the start of the year, the weakest showing since 2011.

The slow-down can be attributed partly to the ongoing impacts of recent high-profile terrorist attacks, which have impacted international European traffic in particular.

Typically, the impact of such events is transitory, but the repeated natured of recent events suggests that the effects may be longer-lasting this time.

In addition, the increasingly uncertain global economic climate continues to affect passenger demand.

As a result, the largest international carrier regions have lost momentum. The upward trend in Europe’s seasonally-adjusted traffic has paused in recent months, and traffic grew by just 2.1% year-on-year in June.

Uncertainly following the Brexit vote in the UK is also expected to hit European airlines and markets the hardest in the coming months.

Meanwhile, international traffic flown by Asia Pacific airlines grew by 8.2% year-on-year in June. However, most of this growth relates to the strong upward trend in seasonally-adjusted traffic seen in the final months of 2015 and into 2016.

The trend has flattened since, with June passenger volumes barely higher than in February.

This could be a sign of Asian passengers being putt off by terrorism in Europe; passenger traffic on the Europe-Asia route fell by 2.6% year-on-year in May.

The good news is, the trend in other regions is picking up. All segment-based passenger routes to and from the Middle East saw solid gains during the first five months of 2016.

And having trended down since July 2015, North American carriers’ international traffic has also picked up in recent months; seasonally-adjusted volumes have risen by 2.1% since March, an annualized rate of over 8%.