International travel could take until 2024 to recover from COVID-19

The CDC relaxed coronavirus screening guidelines for international travelers entering the US this week but the IATA says it will take at least three years for international airline travel to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. “It's a very challenging situation right now,” IATA’s Regional VP for the Americas Peter Cerda said. “The forecast that we have is about $84b collectively on a global scale in terms of losses.” North American carriers are estimated to lose close to $24b this year after making $17b in 2019 according to IATA. “We're hoping for domestic service to recover in about 2023 timeframe, but it is going to be a challenging period of time,” Cerda says. Analysts at Raymond James recently surveyed 661 people to gauge how they expect to change their travel plans due to COVID-19. The results indicate that of the 65% of people who plan to travel in the next year, 58% will only go somewhere they can reach by car and 54% said they would look to travel to less crowded areas. Trends like this are one of the reasons Cerda says, “International transport is going to be the last segment of travel that we're going to see recuperate.”<br/>