In the author’s text for Standard, air traffic expert Rajko Uskoković describes the current situation in air traffic, but also what the future brings for this industry after the COVID-19 pandemic.
IATA (the umbrella international airline association) estimates that the virus-collapse will cancel about 3.8 million flights by the end of June this year and reduce the revenues of the aviation industry by as much as 314 billion dollars, says Uskokovic.
He adds that if the optimistic assessment of the World Trade Organization is that the aviation industry will have a decline of 12.9 percent this year (while the pessimistic one goes up to 35 percent), then the question rightly arises, what are the prospects and future of the fastest types of traffic? The latest recommendations of the governments of the countries that will be the first to open airports and airlines say that it will go gradually and that they will have to keep their distance inside the plane, which means that the load factor will be a maximum of 50 percent. If we compare this percentage with last year’s average world percentage of aircraft occupancy of 82 percent (in Europe in 2019 there was a record occupancy of 85.2 percent) it means that in a plane of 100 seats there will be 30 passengers less or, say, in a plane of 300 seats will be 96 passengers less.
Source: Portal Standard, date: 04/24/2020.