Martin Craig, CEO, Pacific Asia Travel Association
"This massive increase in intra-Asian tourism and air travel is simply driven by the fact that so many more people are going into the so-called ‘middle-class’ status with discretionary income, and one of the first things they want to spend their hard-earned spare cash on is going overseas."
Amadeus
"When capital cities are examined, it is evident that capacity increases are being driven by emerging Asian nations. Jakarta saw the strongest absolute LCC capacity growth of any capital, increasing by 2.8 million seats or 44%, closely followed by Bangkok, up 1.2 million seats or 30%."
Alexandre Jorre, senior manager strategy and business development, airline distribution, Amadeus IT Group
"LCCs’ share of air traffic in Asia grew by two percentage points, from 16.5% to 18.5%, between 2011-12, more than in any other region worldwide."
CAPA
"The combination of the world’s fourth-largest population, a rapidly expanding middle class, a booming economy and archipelago geography are driving demand for domestic air travel."
Brendan Sobie, chief analyst, Centre for Aviation
"The country and airports that don’t invest basically lose out on the traffic to other airports and countries. That of course creates an incentive to invest. Unfortunately, there’s a huge lag; it takes a long time to build an airport, and build a runway, and build a terminal, and what happens is that sometimes the growth is very rapid, they get behind the curve, and we’re seeing some of the governments now racing to catch up to that."
