The International Air Transport Association has revised upward expected 2020 passenger revenue losses for the world’s airlines due to the Covid-19 pandemic from $252 billion to $314 billion, the group reported Tuesday. Speaking during IATA’s weekly conference call on the effects of the crisis on the air transport industry, chief economist Brian Pearce explained that the assumptions used to arrive at the earlier figure hinged on traffic statistics from the last week of March, when the world’s airlines witnessed roughly a 65 percent decline in capacity. Now, said Pearce, traffic has fallen to some 80 percent and, with expectations of an even more severe recession than previously projected—economists now see a 6 percent drop in global GDP for the second quarter of the year—IATA’s view of the ability of the airline industry to respond in the second half of the year has dimmed considerably.
More In Airlines
