Asia Pacific and the Middle East experienced the world’s strongest air traffic growth in 2016, driving a year of broadly positive results for the industry.

According to the full-year global data, released this week by IATA, the world’s air traffic increased 6.3% in 2016 compared to the prior year – well ahead of the 10-year average annual growth rate of 5.5%. And the most robust growth came in the Middle East (11.2%) and Asia Pacific (9.2%), as the region’s emerging economies continue to embrace air travel.

Two of these emerging markets – India and China – showed especially strong growth in 2016; Chinese domestic passenger traffic increased 11.7% while India surged 23.3%. These figures compare to the global average growth rate of 5.7% for domestic air traffic in 2016.

“Air travel was a good news story in 2016. Connectivity increased with the establishment of more than 700 new routes. And a US$44 fall in average return fares helped to make air travel even more accessible. As a result, a record 3.7 billion passengers flew safely to their destination. Demand for air travel is still expanding,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s director general & CEO.

“The challenge for governments is to work with the industry to meet that demand with infrastructure that can accommodate the growth, regulation that facilitates growth and taxes that don’t choke growth. If we can achieve that, there is plenty of potential for a safe, secure and sustainable aviation industry to create more jobs and increase prosperity.”

All global regions saw rising passenger traffic in 2016, with Europe up 4.6% and North America increasing 3.2% year-on-year. African traffic jumped 6.5% while Latin America climbed 3.6%. The world’s largest domestic aviation market, the US, increased 3.4%.

2016’s global growth was broadly in line with 6.2% expansion of seat capacity, and the world’s average load factor was almost unchanged at 80.5%.

Airlines carried a total of 3.7 billion passengers in 2016, and this is expected to reach four billion in 2017. By 2035, IATA predicts that global traffic will reach 7.2 billion passengers per year.