The number of passengers traveling in international premium cabins grew by nearly 9 percent year over year in March

according to data released this week by the International Air Transport Association. While the impact of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the political uprisings in the Middle East curtailed premium volumes in March 2011 and therefore "exaggerated" the gains this year, IATA indicated that premium travel, underpinned by healthy business demand, remained strong. "We estimate that premium travel was about 4 percentage points higher this March than it would have been in the absence of the Arab Spring and Japan earthquake," according to IATA, "but that still has the market growing at a solid rate of over 4 percent in March."