International Air Travel Will Not Return to Normal Until 2023

The impact of the coronavirus on air travel will be felt for many years to come. It would take at least 5 years for overseas air travel to return, with 2025 still expected to be 10% below peak 2019 levels.

IATA Director-general Alexandre de Juniac anticipated international travel would take a lot longer than initially suspected. He said it would require a significant effort for the aviation industry to recover from the pandemic.

“We have published today a new forecast about the potential recovery of the air traffic and what we see is that things should come back to normal in 2023,” Mr de Juniac said.

“That shows the importance and the severity of this crisis on air transport.”

The Geneva-based organisation said it hoped international travel between major centres and between Continents would begin to continue by the end of 2020.

However, even if routes opened up again, international travel would still be as low as half of the pre-crisis levels.

Expenses of flying and commercial aviation competition would be hampered, which means fewer chance to travel for most people.

The organisation urged governments to support the airline industry financially, in order to preserve The viability of international travel in the long term.

The organisation also encouraged governments to implement COVID safe flying practices and checks at airports.

He said the organisation believed preventing travellers who were experiencing coronavirus symptoms from travelling and doing temperature screening were good options.

“To protect aviation’s ability to be a catalyst for the economic recovery, we must not make that prognosis worse by making travel impracticable with quarantine measures,” he said.

“Even in the best of circumstances this crisis will cost many jobs and rob the economy of years of aviation-stimulated growth.”

Source: www.cnbc.com