SP’s
Civil Aviation
Yearbook 2020-2021 T h i r d
i s s u e
EDITORIAL
An Industry at an Inflection Point
W
elcome to the 2020-2021 edition of SP’s Civil Aviation Yearbook! Every catastrophic event is an agent of change. Each one produces advances in technology, new trends emerge, and people reassess their work and life priorities. The 2008 global financial crisis accelerated the rise of digital banking. Now, climate awareness is driving the push for electric-powered automobiles and airplanes. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, how we work, buy products and services, and travel is changing. It makes forecasting everything more difficult, particularly when history is no longer an accurate basis for predicting the future. Today, commercial aviation is at an inflection point. After a prolonged shutdown in which over 90 per cent of flights were cancelled during the 2020 peak of the pandemic, airlines are rebuilding their yield management systems to estimate demand and revenue from fewer high-fare business passengers and more low-fare leisure travelers. International flight schedules are yet to be restored since many countries are slow to fully re-open their borders. Big aircraft were pulled from service. Many will never fly again.
It’s a whole new ball game
The statistics section of our Civil Aviation Yearbook tracks the annual
changes in passenger and cargo demand, fuel price, and ranks airport throughput by country, among other measures. For the past 18 months, however, the massive disruption to global aviation renders 2020 and 2021 comparisons meaningless. Australia is still essentially closed, Singapore has introduced Vaccinated Traveler Lanes (VTLs) with several countries to control passenger flows, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are restricting entry, and yet domestic air travel in China and India is booming. Data from 2019, therefore, are the only benchmarks for future comparisons.
The New Normal
What can we expect in the coming years? Industry analysts and airline executives believe 2019 traffic levels will return by 2024. That estimate is speculative at best given the possibility of new coronavirus variants emerging that could set back any robust global recovery. As covid shifts from pandemic to endemic over time, many industry changes we’re seeing now will become permanent. Our guest contributors highlight some of these – universal health passports, contactless check-in, growth in cargo tonnage and digital commerce, and a preference for nonstop flights. From my perspective, there are five emerging trends that are defining the speed of recovery and the future of the industry.
