The global representative body for the airline industry, the International Air Transport Association (Iata), has reported that global air passenger demand last year was 65.9% lower than in 2019 – the deepest fall in demand in the entire history of aviation. On top of this, forward bookings for airline seats have been in severe decline since late December. 

“Last year was a catastrophe. There is no other way to describe it,” asserted Iata director-general and CEO Alexandre de Juniac. “What recovery there was over the northern hemisphere summer season stalled in the autumn and the situation turned dramatically worse over the year-end holiday season, as more severe travel restrictions were imposed in the face of new outbreaks and new strains of Covid-19.”

International air passenger demand in 2020 was 75.6% down, year-on-year. International passenger capacity fell 68.1% and airliner load factor was 62.2% – a drop of 19.2 percentage points. As for domestic demand, last year that fell by 48.8% compared to 2019. Capacity dropped by 35.7% and the load factor was 66.6% (a fall of 17 percentage points).

December brought no presents for the sector. Total air passenger traffic during the month was 69.7% below that for December 2019. And the December 2020 figure was only a little less bad than the November 2020 year-on-year fall of 70.4%. December capacity was 56.7% down on the figure for the previous December, and the load factor, at 57.5%, was 24.6 percentage points less.

Moving to January this year, bookings for future air travel made during the month were 70% below those for January 2020. This was increasing the pressure on the cash positions of airlines and could affect the timing of the forecast recovery in the sector.

“Iata’s baseline forecast for 2021 is for a 50.4% improvement on 2020 demand that would bring the industry to 50.6% of 2019 levels,” stated the association. “While this view remains unchanged, there is a severe downside risk if more severe travel restrictions in response to new variants persist. Should such a scenario materialise, demand improvement could be limited to just 13% over 2020 levels, leaving the industry at 38% of 2019 levels.”

African airlines displayed the least bad performance last year, with a fall in air passenger demand of 69.8% year-on-year. Their capacity fell by 61.5% and their load factor went down 15.4 percentage points to 55.9%. December demand was, with a decline of 68.8% year-on-year, significantly improved on the 75.8% year-on-year drop in November. 

The worst year-on-year performers in 2020 were the airlines of the Asia-Pacific region, which experienced a collapse of 80.3% in their passenger traffic; their capacity went down by 74.1% and their load factor dropped 19.5 percentage points to 61.4%. Stricter lockdowns meant that December brought them no relief, with demand in that month 94.7% down year-on-year, and basically the same as the year-on-year fall of 95% in November.