The Airline Industry Not Fully Recovering Until 2022, IATA’s de Juniac
The Airline industry will retrace to the pre-crisis level, not before 2022 it seems, said International Air Transport Association Chief Alexandre de Juniac.
“We are asking governments to have a phased approach to restart the industry and to fly again,” Alexandre de Juniac said.
“We are aiming at reopening and boosting the domestic market by end of the second quarter, and opening the regional or continental markets — such as Europe, North America or Asia-Pacific — by the third quarter, and intercontinental in the fall,” he said.
He said they are looking to make efforts for reopening the traffic of Airlines by the end of the second quarter in Europe.
“So for summer we hope that you will see flights within Europe coming back, with I hope interesting prices and very safe processes of control.”
“We are advocating with governments not to implement quarantine measures that will retain people for two weeks that will arrive anywhere,” he said.
De Juniac also considered the mandatory lockdown and flying restrictions for Airlines useless for containing the viral pandemic.
“We think that it is useless provided we have implemented the health and sanitary controls that we are discussing with governments. It is absolutely key for the tourist industry which is so important for so many countries in Europe.”
“Is it possible to have an aircraft full and without risk of contamination? Our answer is yes,” de Juniac said, “provided we implement control and sanitary processes for passengers just before the flight — by asking for temperature control, by the obligation to wear a mask, by cleaning the aircraft properly and disinfecting properly, by limiting the distribution of food to prepackaged food, by limiting cabin luggage to one luggage to avoid disembarking and embarking process to be too overcrowded.”
“you limit the risk of contamination. … And then the quarantine is not useful from our point of view in this case. So if you have special equipment, special controls, special cleaning, you reduce the risk to something which will never be zero but will be negligible. That is our strong conviction based on studies, on the equipment we are using — and on something which is even more important, that is safety, which is the key priority of this industry,” he said.
He further added that they are doing all they can to make the governments ease the restrictions.
“I think the travelers are expecting us to implement a safe process of sanitary and health control for passengers. We are working with governments on that,” he added.
“It will be possible to fly safely at least in Europe we hope, and then it depends on government decisions to lift travel restrictions and border closures.”