APA Issue 2, 2021
GLOBAL EFFORT With international travel still very much on hold because of COVID-19, it is going to take the effort of all industry stakeholders to restore global connectivity, writes James Brass from aviation consultancy, York Aviation.
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he last 18 months has been profoundly strange for the air transport industry. After years of growth and expanding route networks, governmentimposed travel restrictions as a result of COVID-19 have reduced passenger numbers to a trickle and decimated route networks. The impact on the air transport industry and the employment and prosperity it supports has been profound, with hundreds of thousands of job losses worldwide and unparalleled financial losses. However, this is very much only a part of the story. The air connectivity that underpins the functioning of the global economy in terms of trade, investment, knowledge and labour flows, is currently only there in skeleton form. In Summer 2020, for example, the number of route pairs served by the world’s airports had dropped by 53% compared to Summer 2019, and, while Summer 2021 looks better, with route pairs only down around 26% compared to 2019, there is still a very long way to go.
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Recovery is also uneven globally, with some regions suffering less and recovering faster (see Route Pairs by World Region graphic). For instance, Asia and North America, with their large domestic markets, dipped less and are coming back more strongly than Europe – where there has been significant second waves of COVID-19 in recent months – and the market is more reliant on international travel. The economic recovery of cities, regions and countries around the world is dependent on building back this air connectivity. The Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) has estimated that aviation supported $3.5 trillion in GDP and 87.7 million jobs globally in 2018. This estimate included aviation’s role in supporting tourism, which accounted for around $1 trillion of the total, but excluded aviation’s role in supporting trade and in driving productivity through investment and knowledge flows. If these effects were included, the sector’s impact would have been significantly higher.
