Global aviation will not see passenger traffic (RPK) at pre-covid levels until 2024 at the earliest.
That's the assessment made by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in an updated forecast on Tuesday. The organization has thus lowered its forecast from April, which spoke of pre-Covid levels not reaching the earliest in 2023.
Short-haul traffic is expected to recover somewhat faster, but here too IATA has lowered expectations and is now saying that traffic will be restored no earlier than 2023, a year later than previously estimated.
For the current year, IATA expects air traffic to decline by 55 percent. In the April forecast, the assessment was -46 percent.
This can also be contrasted with the latest reported statistics, which showed that international air traffic fell by almost 97 percent in June, after a loss of just over 98 percent in May.
