IATA says passenger demand in September remained highly depressed in September. The airline association said traffic (measured in revenue passenger kilometres or RPKs) was 72.8 per cent below September 2019 levels, only a slight improvement over the 75.2 per cent year-to-year decline recorded in August. Capacity was down 63 per cent compared to a year ago and load factor fell 21.8 percentage points to 60.1 per cent.
The majority of the decline was caused by the slump in international passenger traffic, which fell by 88.8 per cent on last year. Load factor on international routes was just 43.5 per cent.
Domestic demand is picking up, although September traffic was down 43.3 per cent on 2019. This is up on the 50.7 per cent decline reported in August.
“We have hit a wall in the industry’s recovery. A resurgence in Covid-19 outbreaks - particularly in Europe and the US - combined with governments’ reliance on the blunt instrument of quarantine in the absence of globally aligned testing regimes, has halted momentum toward re-opening borders to travel. Although domestic markets are doing better, this is primarily owing to improvements in China and Russia. And domestic traffic represents just a bit more than a third of total traffic, so it is not enough to sustain a general recovery,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s director general and CEO.