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The recovery of global air connectivity persisted in the first quarter of 2023 as it stood at 79 per cent of its pre-pandemic (2019) levels by the end of March. This improvement was recorded despite a slowdown in economic activity through 2022 and into the start of this year, said International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association of the world’s airlines.
The recovery is broad-based across regions, with Africa the strongest performer currently. International air connectivity in Africa exceeded its 2019 level and was at 104 per cent in March 2023.
Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East regions are approaching pre-Covid levels at 97 per cent and 98 per cent, respectively. However, for both Europe and North America, international connectivity is currently at 87 per cent of the 2019 level.
On the other hand, Asia Pacific region continues to lag, at a more modest 62 per cent of its 2019 level in March. However, there has been a strong increase – of 40 percentage points – in Asia Pacific international air connectivity over the past year.
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Air connectivity is crucial as it serves as a virtual bridge faciltatating the movement of essential economic activities between markets, enhancing world trade, investment, tourism, and travel.
In December 2022, IATA projected that continued recovery of the aviation sector will help the global airline industry post an aggregated profit of $4.7 billion in 2023. Notably, the projections were made before China reopened its borders.
Passenger demand is expected to reach 85.5 per cent of 2019 levels, with traffic volume at 4.2 billion passengers, which will be the first time since 2019 for global volume to surpass the 4 billion mark. Cargo volumes are expected to decrease to 57.7 million tonnes from a peak of 65.6 million tonnes in 2021, partly due to global economic uncertainty, IATA said.
IATA in February said that India’s full year domestic traffic rose 48.8 per cent versus 2021, reaching 85.7 per cent of the 2019 level.
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