Global Airline Industry Making Dynamic Comeback in 2022  

The world’s airline industry managed to recover significant lost ground in 2022, said the International Air Transport Association (IATA) this week.

More specifically, according to IATA full year data for 2022, total traffic in increased by 64.4 percent over 2021 and recouped 68.5 percent of pre-Covid  levels.

International traffic last year surged by 152.7 percent compared to 2021 reaching 62.2 percent of 2019 levels with domestic traffic up by 10.9 percent over 2021 and recovering 79.6 percent of full-year 2019 levels.

Airlines in Europe saw full-year traffic increase by 132.2 percent compared to 2021, capacity by 84.0 percent and load factor by 16.7 percentage points to 80.6 percent.

Source: @IATA.

“The industry left 2022 in far stronger shape than it entered as most governments lifted Covid-19 travel restrictions during the year and people took advantage of the restoration of their freedom to travel,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh.

Walsh is expecting this momentum to continue into the year, despite some governments’ “over-reactions” to China’s re-opening.

Meanwhile, airlines in North America reported a 130.2 percent traffic increase in 2022 over 2021 with capacity up by 71.3 percent  and load factor by 20.7 percentage points to 80.8 percent.

“It is vital that governments learn the lesson that travel restrictions and border closures have little positive impact in terms of slowing the spread of infectious diseases in our globally inter-connected world,” said Walsh, adding that restrictions have “an enormous negative impact on people’s lives and livelihoods, as well as on the global economy that depends on the unfettered movement of people and goods”.

 In December last year, total traffic increased by 39.7 percent over the same month in 2021 to 76.9 percent of December 2019 levels. International traffic for the month rose by 80.2 percent over December 2021 recouping 75.1 percent of December 2019 levels and domestic traffic rose by 2.6 percent  recovering 79.9 percent of December 2019 traffic.

IATA forecasts the global airline industry to tip into profit in 2023 for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic with passengers expected to generate 522 billion dollars in revenues and demand reaching 85.5 percent of 2019 levels.