IATA's survey takes a measure of five key indicators: profitability, demand, input costs, yield and employment - and asks respondents to reflect on the past three months, as well as their outlook for the year ahead.

Beginning with the outlook for industry profitability, results from cargo and passenger respondents were combined - but the majority of respondents, 74.2 percent expect profitability to remain flat or improve over the next 12 months. Looking back on the first quarter, 51.6 percent of respondents believed industry profitability improved, year over year.

Moving on to demand growth, U.S. West Coast port disruptions, which led to a surge in demand in Q1 2015, were the likely cause of more than one-quarter of respondents reporting lower volumes in Q1 2016 relative to the year prior. For the next 12 months, those surveyed were optimistic about cargo demand, with 43.3 percent expecting stability and 43.3 percent expecting growth.

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