International air travel falling off a cliff

Another news story this morning from USA Today provides more evidence that air travel this year will be much weaker than 2008 as the recession grips even more organizations. A post yesterday on airline executives' optimism that they don't expect  much more discounting of leisure fares also included a few results of a survey by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, estimating how many companies are planning to spend less on travel this year than last -- a whopping 71 percent. Here's the full news release on the ACTE survey.

Another gloomy report on airline traffic was published by The Boyd Group last week. I neglected to link you to it before so here is one short article among many that have been written about the Boyd study.

One of the more interesting factoids reported in the USA Today story is how US Airways differs in its plans for international service this year from other airlines. Its capacity is up, meaning flights from PHL will be up as it adds routes this summer to Europe and Israel. Look for more reports like these in coming days and weeks.