After spending a year battling the biggest crisis his industry has faced, Tony Douglas has come to a simple conclusion: don’t obsess over things that are out of your control. “You know what? It is actually OK to have no idea exactly how this is going to pan out,” says the British CE of Etihad, Abu Dhabi’s national airline. “The trick to it is to be able to embrace ambiguity.” A phlegmatic approach is useful given the state of the airline industry. The pandemic started off as a minor operational concern for global airlines as they suspended flights to mainland China in February last year, but it has since spiralled into a crisis that has parked half of the world’s passenger aircraft and is stretching into its second year. Douglas’s team meticulously charts predictions for the industry’s recovery from rival airlines, investment banks and consultancies, but has watched helplessly as these have all been undone by rising infection rates around the world. “Every time we have looked at this, on a monthly basis, it has continued to move to the right”, and get worse, he says. Interview has more.<br/>
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Etihad Airways on Sunday slashed its outlook for a full recovery in air travel demand. The carrier now expects passenger numbers on its routes to return to pre-COVID levels only by 2024. “We're expecting to see stronger demand certainly in the second half of the year (2021),” said Martin Drew, Senior VP Sales & Cargo at Etihad. However, a return to 2019 levels will happen much later. “Our latest view is that we'll see a full recovery now by 2024; previously it was 2023,” he added. The airline is already seeing higher numbers on ‘ethnic’ routes such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, the executive said Sunday. Etihad, which is among the three Gulf carriers working with IATA on its ‘Travel Pass’ initiative, said passenger trials will begin in April on its North American routes. Chris Youlten, Executive Director Operations Strategy at Etihad, said that IATA’s platform was only one of the travel passes the airline is currently exploring.<br/>