Airline industry association IATA said yesterday the outlook for the ailing aviation industry remains bleak and warned airlines that a recovery will take more than three years.
Giovanni Bisignani, the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) director general, also urged governments to adopt open skies policies and further deregulate trans-Atlantic air travel to escape the crisis.
“The situation is really difficult, caused by this worldwide recession. We face a demand shock. Traffic is disappearing. Cargo has never been so down,” he told reporters.
“It will take more than three years [for revenue] to recover. The [world] economy is not moving forward. We have piles of inventory — chips and cars — not moving,” Bisignani said.
The IATA boss is in Malaysia ahead of the association’s annual general meeting, which will be held here from Sunday to Tuesday. He said the meeting will focus on safety, environmental issues and industry liberalization.
Bisignani said Asia had emerged as the center of the problem — between January and April global passenger demand fell 7.5 percent, but Asian carriers led the plunge with 11 percent.
Bisignani said amid the swine flu outbreak and with no signs of global recovery, IATA would further downgrade its airlines losses for this year, adding that the new, “more pessimistic” data would be revealed on Monday.
“We are in intensive care. It will be substantially worse than March forecast. Now fuel price is going up. That is bad news,” he said.
IATA in March said losses this year could hit US$4.7 billion after forecasting in December that airlines could lose US$2.5 billion. The airline industry posted a revenue of US$530 billion last year.
Bisignani pressed for full liberalization between the EU and US, and mergers between airlines, among measures he said would boost the industry.
“We are not asking for support from governments. It is time for governments to wake up,” he said. “Defending the flag on the tail of the plane does not defend the jobs. The only thing that defends the jobs is having a healthier industry that makes profit and can support the challenges of the economy today.”
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