European aviation: recovery slides further as travel restrictions rise

IATA says increased international travel restrictions are a "knee jerk" response to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. It points out that there is no clear relationship between COVID case numbers and international travel restrictions.

Unfortunately, there is however a clear relationship between travel restrictions and aviation demand. Europe's capacity recovery, which had already lost impetus, has now been on a sliding trend for six weeks.

Seat numbers for Europe are 29.7% below 2019 levels in the week of 6-Dec-2021. This represents a decline of 5.1ppts over the past six weeks.

Europe is fourth in the regional capacity recovery ranking. Asia Pacific capacity is down by 36.1%, Africa by 33.2%, the Middle East by 28.6%, North America by 15.8%, and Latin America by 13.9% (taking Latin America to the top of the ranking for the first time during the pandemic).

Traffic data are not yet available for the 'Omicron era', but the additional travel restrictions and the consequent erosion of traveller confidence may have a bigger impact on demand than on capacity, at least in the short term.

Vaccination programmes to mitigate the effects of all COVID-19 variants remain the best long term solution.