A passenger checks flight information on a board in the departure hall at Madrid Barajas Airport.
Paul Hanna | Bloomberg | Getty Images
SINGAPORE – Two decades of increased passenger air traffic have been wiped out in 2020, a new report has been found.
“The pandemic and its aftermath have destroyed 21 years of global passenger traffic growth in a matter of months, reducing traffic this year to levels last seen in 1999,” said Cirium, a travel data and analysis company.
“Compared to last year, passenger traffic is estimated to decrease by 67% in 2020,” the company said in a press release.
In 2020 there were only 2.9 trillion passenger kilometers globally (RPK) compared to 8.7 trillion in 2019. RPKs are used as a measure of air traffic.
The aviation industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, as countries have closed their borders in an attempt to stop the spread of the disease.
According to Cirium data, airlines operated 16.8 million flights from January 1 to December 20, 2020. This dropped from 33.2 million in the same period in 2019.
More than 40 airlines have completely ceased or suspended operations, and experts expect more to fail in 2021, according to Cirium.
The road to recovery
Asia-Pacific and North America were “the fastest settlers on the long road to recovery,” according to the Cirium Airline Insights Review 2020 report.
This trend was reflected in Cirium’s list of the busiest airports in the world, which was dominated by airports in the US and China.
Recognizing that major cities such as New York, Beijing and Shanghai were missing from the list, David White, vice president of strategy at Cirium, told CNBC that it appears that airports such as John F. Kennedy in New York have been “disproportionately affected by their international traffic in normal times. “
“Airports such as Minneapolis, O’Hare (Chicago), [Dallas-Fort Worth], Atlanta and Charlotte have significantly higher traffic than JFK now, due to the volume of domestic flights at those central airports, “he said. A similar report was reported observed in some airports in China.
International flights decreased by 68% compared to 2019, while domestic travel decreased by 40%.
Cirium expects passenger demand for air travel to return in 2024 or 2025, with domestic and leisure traffic being the first segments to show a “sustained recovery”.