Global aviation to recover by mid-2023 despite uncertainty of Ukraine war
Global aviation is expected to go back to 2019 levels by August 2023 despite the uncertainty caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, traffic at the end of the year will be between 10 and 15 per cent down on pre-pandemic levels, but a steady recovery is expected to continue throughout 2022.
“We do expect our baseline scenario to be a pretty steady scenario over the rest of 2022,” Cirium’s senior consultant Richard Evans told journalists today.
“And we haven’t yet got a reason to change that. Despite what we are seeing from the situation in Ukraine and Russia, we’re not changing our scenario at a global level.”
Evans’ words echoed those of Emirates and Etihad’s chief executives Tim Clark and Tony Douglas, who both argued the industry will go back to pre-Covid levels by “mid-to-end 2023” as a result of the war in Ukraine.
Even though Russia was 4 per cent of the global traffic market, Cirium said that making long-term predictions could be difficult because of the conflict’s potential to derail economic recovery.
“We have seen fuel prices increase and actually for airlines that is probably the most immediate impact,” Evans added.
“More widely, high energy prices, particularly in Europe, are going to cause widespread economic pressure that could slow down growth and drive increased inflation. It’s uncertain how that will feed through into demand for air travel.”
Pent-up demand is expected to be among the main drivers of a strong summer 2022 in both Europe and the US.
Both areas have seen numbers growing over 2021, with global capacity reaching 60 per cent of 2019 levels despite an Omicron-induced bump at the end of the year, which spilled over in January and February.
“We have seen nothing to really make us think that summer 2022 in North America and Western Europe is really threatened by [the war] at the moment.”
Following the end of travel restrictions in many parts of Europe and the US, travel demand has surged faster than ever, causing disruption for hundreds of thousands of travellers.
UK passengers were told they could face two months of disruption as the industry struggles to hire new staff and Covid rips through the workforce, CityAM reported.
Even though aviation bosses, especially at airports, are pushing to bring in new crew members, fears are growing that disruption could spill into the summer period.
“The latent demand for travel, I would argue, is probably greater now than it’s been in any time that I can remember,” Etihad’s Tony Douglas said.
“Consequently, what we’ve seen is (demand) go off almost like a fire hydrant, as the travel restrictions ease.”