Domestic aviation markets. The ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown aviation and travel markets into chaos. Steep declines in airline capacity have been recorded and all eyes are on markets showing signs of recovery.

It is generally recognised that international operations will be more complex and limited than domestic markets, where standardisation of processing is possible. Internationally, consensus on inflight and airport standards will be slow in coming.

But 'green shoots' are expected first in countries with large domestic aviation markets.

Those that bring COVID-19 outbreaks under control will be the first to recover. Others will watch closely to see how these fare and whether the opening up of air travel is accompanied by new waves of infection.

The good the bad and the ugly classification is essentially a spectrum of risk. The "good" markets are lower risk, those which appear to be cautiously opening up, as coronavirus cases trend downwards or are already very low.

The graphs used are taken from Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center data https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/.