Passenger traffic by air might intensify late May or early June depending on the course of the pandemic, extent of inoculation, and travel restrictions by individual countries, said participants in the Aviation Arena webinar on prospects and challenges in the air industry in 2021.
Participants underlined that the early optimism in that industry for this year has deflated with the spike in cases of new variants of COVID-19 and a slow process of inoculation in Croatia and Europe.
They agreed that 2020 was the hardest year ever in the history of the air industry and that a lot of time will be required for its recovery and the question is whether it will ever achieve record numbers like those recorded in 2019. With the first cancellations of announced flights in Europe for March and April the agony is just being prolonged.
Difficulty to forecast recovery
The prospects do not appear at all promising and optimism is declining and no one dares forecast anything for the industry in light of the pandemic. There is a problem with flexibility and how to quickly adapt flights and personnel once traffic is restored, as well as the permanent costs and liquidity of companies, Tomislav Mihetec from the Croatian air traffic control said.
He said that Eurocontrol has three scenarios for recovery in the sector in relation to faster inoculation in 2021.
The first scenario takes into consideration that the level of air traffic recorded in 2019 could be achieved in 2024. However, that is already unlikely due to a slow pace of giving COVID jabs to population.
The second scenario foresees that if a greater portion of people are immunised against the covid infection in 2022, recovery could be achieved in 2025 or 2026. If the situation with vaccines does not improve in 2022, then recovery cannot be expected before 2030.
Croatia has similar forecasts, said Mihetec, adding that June and July seem to be the most optimistic and that 1,200 flights a day could be expected whereas in 2019 that number was around 2,700 and in August 1,800 flights can be expected compared to 3,200 in 2019.
Mihetec said that there were 760 million fewer passengers in 2020 compared to 2019 and that in 2020 the industry lost almost USD eight billion in Europe alone.
“Croatia had only 42% of flights in 2020 on the year or 300,000 flights which took it back to 15 years ago and the level of 2004 and 2005 and one example of the poor season can be seen that in the peak summer day when there were 1,900 flights whereas in 2019 on that day there were more than 3,500 flights,” he said.
