The outlook for the aviation sector this year is grim following a “catastrophic” 2020 that saw overall international demand for aviation drop to 75,6% below 2019 levels, according to the latest statistics from Iata.
The association’s baseline forecast for 2021 – provided during a press briefing to discuss the full year’s statistics on Wednesday (February 3) – is for a 50,4% improvement on 2020 demand that would bring the industry to 50,6% of 2019 levels.
However, there is a major downside risk if more severe travel restrictions – implemented in response to new COVID-19 variants persist. Should such a scenario materialise, demand improvement could be limited to just 13% over 2020 levels, leaving the industry at 38% of 2019 levels.
“The world is more locked down today than at virtually any point in the past 12 months and passengers face a bewildering array of rapidly changing and globally unco-ordinated travel restrictions,” said Iata dg and ceo, Alexandre de Juniac.
According to him, hope that the arrival of vaccines would lead to a prompt restoration in global air travel had been dashed in the face of new outbreaks and new mutations of the disease.
“We urge governments to work with industry to develop the standards for vaccination, testing, and validation that will enable governments to have confidence that borders can reopen and international air travel can resume once the virus threat has been neutralised,” said Alexandre.
Iata Travel Pass
He pointed out that the Iata Travel Pass would help this process, by providing passengers with an app to “easily and securely manage their travel in line with any government requirements for COVID-19 testing or vaccine information”.
The first release of the app will go live on March 1, offering four interoperable elements:
- A registry of COVID entry requirements powered by Timatic;
- A registry of labs, test centres or vaccination providers;
- A means for passengers to securely upload test or vaccination certificates on their phones and share them when appropriate; and
- A digital identity to verify the owner of the certificate.
The second release of the app will go live on April 2 and will contain more elements as advised by the newly launched Iata Travel Pass Advisory Group.
Key stats from the annual Iata report
- Domestic demand in 2020 was down 48,8% compared with 2019.
- Bookings for future travel made in January 2021 were down 70% compared with a year ago, putting further pressure on airline cash positions and potentially impacting the timing of the expected recovery.
- African airlines’ traffic fell 69,8% last year compared with 2019. Capacity dropped 61,5%, and load factors sank 15,4 percentage points to 55,9%.
- Forward bookings have been falling sharply since late December.
