IATA cuts its air travel forecast and August 2020 records the worst summer season on record
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced a reduction in its forecast for air passenger traffic for the year 2020, reflecting the weak levels recorded with the end of the summer season in the northern hemisphere, and announcing a decrease in passenger rates by 66% compared to 2019 after it was only 63%.
The demand for air travel during the month of August continued to decline significantly compared to normal levels, with a decrease in passenger revenue per kilometer to 75.3% compared to August 2019, but this is a slight improvement from the annual contraction recorded in July of 79.5%. Domestic markets continued to outpace international markets in terms of recovery, although most of them remained significantly lower compared to last year. In August, capacity (measured by the number of seats per kilometer) decreased 63.8% compared to a year ago, and load factor decreased by 27.2 points to an all-time low in August of 58.5%.
According to data from the flights, the recovery in air travel services stopped in mid-August due to the return of government restrictions as part of its efforts to tackle the new spread of the Coronavirus in a number of major markets.
As air travel bookings in the fourth quarter show that the recovery since its lowest point in April will continue to decline, despite previous expectations that the decline in global annual growth will be at 55% levels by December, an improvement is now expected. Much slower with December forecasts down 68% from a year ago.
In this regard, Alexander de Juniac, Director-General and President of the International Air Transport Association, said: “The traffic during the month of August was disastrous, registering the worst summer season ever, so the recovery in international travel was almost non-existent, and the local markets in Australia and Japan declined in the reality of their response to outbreaks. New virus and travel restrictions. A few months ago, we thought that a drop in demand for the whole year by -63% compared to 2019 would be bad, according to the data before us. However, after we witnessed the worst performance of the summer season in history, we revised our forecasts down to -66%.
Related Posts