UN agency warns of another bad year for airlines

The UN aviation agency on Friday predicted "prolonged depressed demand" for air travel and more financial woes for airlines, following a year of fewer flights and big losses blamed on the pandemic Air travel plunged 60% in 2020 as nations closed borders and restricted travel to slow the spread of Covid-19, the ICAO said in a report. The near-term outlook, it said, "is for prolonged depressed demand, with downside risks to global air travel recovery predominating in the first quarter of 2021, and likely to be subject to further deterioration." With just 1.8b passengers taking to the air during the first year of the pandemic, compared to 4.5b in 2019, airline losses reached US$370b, according to ICAO figures. Airports and air navigation services providers lost a further US$115b and US$13b, respectively. And severe liquidity strains, the ICAO said, are now "placing the industry's financial viability in question and threatening millions of jobs around the world." A recovery, the ICAO said, will hinge on the successful rollout of vaccines, which have now started to be distributed.<br/>