Transportation

Recent Trends in Passenger Air Transportation

Serge Narkevich

In my recent article (see here) I discussed the passenger airlines strategies for the post-COVID-19 world. There were several distinct strategies that were extensively employed by the world’s leading airlines. Nevertheless, here I would like to focus on a more general, more high-level look at the passenger air travel trends and tendencies.

Note that the following analysis is based on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) data. Notably, it derives from ICAOs monthly Air Transport Monthly Monitor (recent issues can be accessed here). The most recent data in the November 2021 report is for September 2021. Furthermore, developments in most metrics are compared to 2019 levels, which is before the pandemic started.

The Slow Recovery Continues

After the deepest fall seen in April 2020 passenger air travel has been recovering for almost one year and a half. Although uneven at times – interrupted by several bouts of the COVID-19 new strains in February 2021 and in August 2021 – the recuperation of the airline industry has been quite clear. It can be discerned in both major metrics which has been growing fairly steadily since April 2020:

  • passenger traffic;
  • aircraft capacity available for passengers.

Aircraft Loading Growth Uneven

The developments in terms of the load factor have been less positive. Earlier there were fears about returning aircraft back available for travel. Nevertheless, as said above, it has been making quite steady progress. At the same time, demand from the public has not been growing as quickly as it had been forecast by the airlines before. So in recent months – August and September 2021 – the load factor has been falling. However, the decline has been insignificant, and this trend can be expected to reverse and loading to return to growth soon.

Only National Travel Oriented Airports Have Recovered

In terms of airport traffic (only the top world airports were analyzed):

  • plane departures growth vs. 2019 could only be seen only in two US airports in Phoenix and Salt Lake City – basically, air travel only at the national level;
  • in terms of passengers, all the major airports have shown a decline and have still not recovered from the pandemic influence.

In conclusion, the major trends are showing there the airline industry is slowly but steadily recovering with mild interruptions from the new COVID-19 strains. Passenger air travel is expected to reach the pre-pandemic levels sometime in the middle of next of next year in all passenger traffic, aircraft capacity, and the load factor.