Aviation industry ‘out of the woods’, but remains ‘very fragile’; traffic back to pre-crisis levels

IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani commented that the aviation industry is "out of the woods" with two consecutive years of profit expected in 2010 and 2011. But he added the usual rider that the industry remains "very fragile" and has a "very weak balance sheet". Mr Bisignani added that the industry's current profit margin of around 1% and cost of capacity of 7-8% of borrowing means the industry is "not very sexy for investors" and cautioned: "If we have an emergency, a volcano or something like this, with the financial situation of the banks completely different from five years ago, we'll be in trouble."