Airfares in Asia Pacific still on the rise, domestic fare increases led the charge in India: Amex Business Travel

11 March 2008

New Delhi: Airfares across Asia Pacific continued their upward trend with a 1 per cent increase in the fourth quarter of 2007.

However, this was slightly lower than the 3 per cent rise witnessed during the third quarter.

The airfare trends were reported by American Express Business Travel in the latest Asia Pacific Business Travel Monitor, the industry's quarterly retrospective pricing benchmark that tracks airfare trends.

The American Express Business Travel Monitor, Asia Pacific tracks a constant set of round trip airfares, all originating in the Asia Pacific region with destinations throughout the world.  More than 370 city pairs are included.  Each city pair is weighted according to usage patterns by business travellers (as per the American Express Business Travel database). 

A high demand city pair such as Melbourne-Sydney will have a higher weighting than Perth-Sydney when determining overall changes to Australian domestic airfares.  The following 14 countries have been included:  Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. 

The fourth quarter 2007 report tracks data for the quarter ending 30 December 2007.