EUROCONTROL releases new 2020-2024 forecast, sees no full traffic recovery until beyond 2024

EUROCONTROL released (04-Nov-2020) a new forecast looking at the possible evolution of air traffic in Europe over 2020 to 2020. In the most optimistic scenario, traffic is forecast to return to 2019 levels by 2024. In the second and most likely scenario, 2024 traffic would only be at 92% of the 2019 figure. In the third scenario, traffic in 2024 would be 75% of the 2019 figure and would not reach numbers seen in 2019 until 2029. The forecast is based on three headline scenarios,

• Scenario 1: Vaccine widely made available for travellers (or end of pandemic) by summer 2021, with traffic only returning to 2019 levels by 2024;
• Scenario 2: Vaccine widely made available for travellers (or end of pandemic) by summer 2022, with traffic only returning to 2019 levels by 2026;
• Scenario 3. Vaccine not effective, with lingering infection and low passenger confidence, with traffic only returning to 2019 levels by 2029.

The forecast shows that the evolution of the aviation sector is strongly dependent on how soon an effective vaccine is made widely available and by levels of public confidence. [more - original PR]