Singapore Airlines Ltd., Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. and other Asian airlines will likely post the first region-wide profit in three years as the economic rebound spurs traffic to pre-recession levels, a trade group said.

Airlines in the region, which lost a total of $11 billion in the past two years, may also return to profitability faster than peers in the U.S. and Europe, Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, said in an interview Sunday. He declined to give a full-year
profit estimate.

“U.S. carriers have been struggling with a very large, slow-growing market and on top of that, a downturn,” Herdman said by phone from Kuala Lumpur, adding that “the recovery in Europe is still anemic.”

Prospects at airlines are improving as Asia’s economies emerge from the worst recession in six decades, spurring demand for air travel and cargo shipments. Asia’s major economies will grow by 8.7 percent this year, outpacing the 3.1 percent and 1 percent expansion in the U.S. and Europe respectively, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund.

China Airlines Ltd., Taiwan’s biggest carrier, said last month it expects to report a profit this year, while Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s largest airline, said in May it expects “strong” financial results for the year, as the economic rebounds lifts demand for premium passenger travel and cargo.

“Profits at airlines in the region will remain strong,” said Jay Ryu, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Mirae Asset Securities Co. “Traffic growth will continue into the second half, along with load factors.”

Korean Air Lines Co. and Asiana Airlines Inc., South Korea’s two largest carriers, may post record earnings this year, benefiting from a pickup in cargo demand, while profits at Cathay Pacific and Singapore Air may return to pre-crisis levels, Ryu estimated.

Korean Air shares have risen 45 percent this year, as of the close of trade Saturday, while Asiana’s have more than doubled in the period. Cathay Pacific has climbed 8.4 percent this year through Saturday.

Capacity increases for the next six months will likely lag behind the growth in traffic as airlines in the region seek to boost profits, according to Herdman. In Asia, passenger traffic, or the total distance it carried paying customers, for the first five months of the year was 11 percent higher than a year earlier, while cargo was up 36 percent, he said. (Bloomberg)