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Air traffic recovery by 2024 requires vaccine by next summer

A full recovery in Europe’s air traffic by 2024 depends on a Covid vaccine being widely available for travellers by summer 2021 according to Eurocontrol, the European air traffic management body.

A delay in producing an effective vaccine on this scale or a “patchy uptake” could delay a full recovery until 2026 or even 2029, Eurocontrol warned.

The organisation’s latest five-year forecast offers three scenarios for recovery from the Covid-19 crisis.

The most-optimistic forecast of a recovery to 2019 levels by 2024 assumes “a vaccine is widely made available for travellers by summer 2021”.

Should a vaccine only be widely available, or the pandemic end, by summer 2022, Eurocontrol forecasts a recovery to 2019’s level may be pushed back to 2026.

The association’s worst-case scenario that there is no effective vaccine and the infection lingers suggests recovery could be delayed until 2029.

If the first forecast proves right, Eurocontrol expects sufficient testing facilities for passengers and “relatively good passenger confidence” by mid-2021, but with some travellers – including business travellers – still reluctant to fly.

In this scenario, Eurocontrol suggests airlines able to invest, especially low cost carriers, will re-hire employees.

But it forecasts a delay in the restart of some long-haul routes, with North Atlantic routes likely to resume first.

In the worst-case scenario, Eurocontrol foresees a vaccine becoming available by summer 2022 “but uptake is patchy”, making it “difficult for airlines to operate as pre-Covid” with “some regions experiencing renewed outbreak phases”.

Demand would “bounce back for 60%-70% of travellers” by mid-2022 but there would be a “permanent drop in propensity to fly”.

The revised November forecast follows a slightly more optimistic one in September.

Eurocontrol noted the number of flights in Europe in March to October this year was down by two thirds (65%) on 2019 – representing a return to “pre-1990 flight levels”.

It reported the return to flying there has been as “driven by larger states maintaining traffic a little more strongly: a mix of repatriation, cargo and domestic flights”.

The forecast discounted the risk of Brexit, noting: “We have assumed continued transport connectivity will be ensured.

“Businesses and individuals operating in the UK should see no change to existing conditions after the transition period.”

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