Aviation may change "radically"
The Association of European Airlines (AEA) is set to tell its members they could stand to suffer a combined operating loss of €2.9bn for the full-year 2009.
An AEA spokesperson told ABTN it was preparing a number of "facts and figures" to be presented to its airline members at its assembly in Dubrovnik next week.
The Association said the €2.9bn forecast loss was 50% worse than the previous year's deficit of €1.9bn and blamed widespread falling yields and traffic.
"The yields have been really diabolical this year. We saw something like a 17% drop in yields during the second quarter, we haven't got the third quarter figures yet. That's just astonishing," the AEA said.
"It's a combination of business travel being much harder hit than discretionary travel, and also businessmen trading down wherever they can, either at lower fare levels or being able to get better deals on business class fares."
The AEA has also warned that the aviation industry in Europe may never fully recover from the current crisis resulting in a "paradigm shift".
"There's a sense that when we come out of this crisis eventually, things are going to be very different," the AEA said.
"We won't return to business as usual. We think that some of the lost business travel will remain lost or take a very long time to come back."
The Association said it expects the structure of the aviation industry to be "radically altered" when it comes out of the crisis.
"There are a number of carriers which have disappeared and the common assumption is that there may be more before we see the end of all this," AEA added.
Around 34,000 industry jobs could be lost by the end of the year, a figure which is expected to among those announced by the AEA next week.
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