Our AirInsight Airline Performance Index is showing a very slow but upward recovery for airlines from the global pandemic. Our index, on average, has begun to creep upward on a week to week basis, but not yet enough to celebrate as emerging from trouble.
But there have been some milestones. On October 18th, passenger traffic finally broke the 1 million mark not seen since March 16th. But with normal levels around 2.5 million, we still have a long way to go to regain “normal” conditions for the industry.
The following table shows weekly averages from the week ending March 7th through October 17th, 2020. We’ve extended a trend line in red that assumes no further lockdowns and continued growth at the same rate of improvement. The result is that we return to 2019 levels in September of 2023.
The orange line shows what might happen with additional lockdowns should the influenza season prove vulnerable to the COV-SARS2 virus. That would push out recovery to 2019 levels in mid-2024.
