Global air passenger traffic shows historic decline in 2020, future bookings down 70%

The International Air Transport Association's report on global passenger traffic in 2020 puts specific numbers to what has been known intuitively for some time – it was a historically bad year for the air travel industry.

IATA says demand – measured as revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs – declined by nearly 66% compared to the full year of 2019, making it the sharpest drop in air passenger traffic in aviation history.

And as COVID infection rates and related travel restrictions continue to shift in countries around the globe, consumers are not booking future travel in the way some had hoped. IATA says in January bookings for future travel were down 70% compared to one year ago, “putting further pressure on airline cash positions and potentially impacting the timing of the expected recovery.”

“Optimism that the arrival and initial distribution of vaccines would lead to a prompt and orderly restoration in global air travel have been dashed in the face of new outbreaks and new mutations of the disease,” says Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s director general and CEO.

“The world is more locked down today than at virtually any point in the past 12 months and passengers face a bewildering array of rapidly changing and globally uncoordinated travel restrictions.”

For 2020, international passenger demand saw the sharpest decline, dropping 75.6% below 2019 levels. Domestic demand was down 48.8% year-over-year.

IATA’s baseline forecast for 2021 predicts an improvement of 50.4% over 2020 demand, which would bring the industry to 50.6% of 2019 levels. But the organization cautions that if more severe restrictions are put in place due to new COVID variants, demand could be limited to an improvement of just 13% over 2020 figures, equating to a full-year figure of 38% of 2019 levels.

“We urge governments to work with industry to develop the standards for vaccination, testing, and validation that will enable governments to have confidence that borders can reopen and international air travel can resume once the virus threat has been neutralized,” de Juniac says.