The war in Ukraine is an unknown factor, but international air travel is expected to have fully recovered from the Covid-crisis in most regions by mid-2023, with Africa lagging behind until late 2023. That’s the view of four airline bosses at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit in Manchester on April 7. CAPA summit: ‘Air travel up for full recovery by summer 2023’.
In an opening panel discussion, Sir Tim Clark (Emirates), Tony Douglas (Etihad), Anko van der Werff (SAS), and Allan Kilavuka (Kenya Airways) discussed the current state of the industry. On April 6, IATA reported 115.9 percent higher revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs) in February compared to the same month of 2021 but still down 45.5 percent on 2019. This reflects that air travel has been getting out of the Omicron crisis. Eurocontrol is projecting traffic in Europe to return to 92 percent of 2019 levels by the end of the year.
Active as a journalist since 1987, with a background in newspapers, magazines, and a regional news station, Richard has been covering commercial aviation on a freelance basis since late 2016.
Richard is contributing to AirInsight since December 2018. He also writes for Airliner World, Aviation News, Piloot & Vliegtuig, and Luchtvaartnieuws Magazine. Twitter: @rschuur_aero.