Representatives of the international aviation industry gathered in the country to commemorate Aviation Day.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) pointed out this Thursday (March 17, 2022), in Ecuador, that it is expected losses in the sector of around 11,600 million dollars this year.
“As an industry (all airlines on a global scale) in 2019 it had 26.4 billion dollars of Profitsbut in 2020 there were 137.7 billion losses. In 2021 it was 51.8 billion lossesand the forecast for this year is 11.6 billion lossessaid Peter Cerdá, IATA Regional Vice President for the Americas.
Speaking to the press in Quito, where the entity commemorated Aviation Day, Cerdá clarified that it is a forecast that is calculated based on the gradual recovery of the sector, hand in hand with improvements in the control of the pandemic. of COVID-19.
Is a projectionbecause there are still countries that have their borders closed, others that maintain sanitary protocols that slow down the situation, and the effects that the conflict in Russia and Ukraine may have on the sector, as well as the cost of fuel, are still unknown.
As for the Profitsexpect that as of 2024, airlines will recover the international traffic they had in 2019, while they calculate that global domestic traffic could be recovered by mid-2023.
However, the situation varies by country, since in 2021 Mexico recovered international traffic, while the national one even exceeded that of 2019, Cerdá commented.
“There are markets that are advancing much faster, that are going to reach the 2019 goal before 2023 or 2024, but it has depended a lot on how the markets have been reopening,” he noted.
As an example, he pointed out that, until last month, Chile had only recovered 4% of what its international market was at 2019 levels because it maintained sanitary measures that do not make it “very interesting for travelers to go to the country.”
Argentina is also added to the delay, while Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica are markets that have recovered “because even today no type of antigen test or PCR is required, nor is it required to prove whether they are vaccinated or not. They are operating as if they were in normal conditions, and that is allowing for a much faster recovery, “he said.
Cerdá, who participated in the Aviation Day Forum In the Ecuadorian capital, he assured that despite everything, the Latin American region is, at the moment, “the best situated, compared to Europe, Asia and Africa, where they are still suffering from the pandemic or other factors that are not allowing a recovery.” EFE
