PARIS (Reuters) - 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 (https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fskytra.airbus.com%2Fpresses%2Fcovid-19-impact-on-global-air-travel-23-april&data=02%7C01%7Claurence.frost%40thomsonreuters.com%7C055642bce03940d42daa08d7e7506926%7C62ccb8646a1a4b5d8e1c397dec1a8258%7C0%7C0%7C637232205851692896&sdata=4pmLAkgTrbI3eIrGBJs3MLzdd02jRr%2B1OGrap3AfKM0%3D&reserved=0) published on Thursday by Skytra, an Airbus-owned (PA:AIR) 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.