Passenger traffic growth still cooling down in 2026
Global air travel is projected to shift to a new normal growth as airlines fail to catch up with demand caused by limited aircraft and staff availability.
In a report, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said that global passenger traffic is expected to increase by 4.9 percent in 2026. This means a “modest improvement” in global gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
“While this represents a slight deceleration from 2025, growth is likely to remain near the long-term average,” IATA said.
In the past two years, the airline industry’s growth has been cooling down. The growth in revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) is expected to align more closely with GDP, at about 1.5 times in the 2024-2026 period.
Compared to the past three decades, global air travel has consistently outpaced economic growth, expanding at about 2.3 times the rate of global GDP.
This trend is now being associated with persistent capacity constraints such as delays in aircraft delivery delays, maintenance backlogs and labor shortages. These have been limiting the airlines’ ability to scale operations amid the high demand.
In a separate note, IATA said the gap between aircraft supply and demand is unlikely to close until around 2031 to 2034.
This shortage was spurred by the late deliveries and order backlogs surpassing 17,000 planes. This is equivalent to 60 percent of the current active fleet and nearly 12 years of current production capacity.
While manufacturers are seen speeding up their production in 2026, the need for planes is growing while they are still catching up with deliveries in late 2025.
By 2026, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to lead in terms of traffic growth, with a projected increase of 7.3 percent. North America is seen to lag other regions with a growth rate of just 1.5 percent.
