ACI
Uncertainties remain against the background of an uneven recovery
Airports Council International (ACI) World has today published its quarterly assessment analyzing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on airports, revealing a positive and immediate impact on global air travel demand.
The recent momentum created by the lifting of many health measures and the relaxation of most travel restrictions in many European countries and in the Americas has renewed industry optimism. It however exposed even more the uneven recovery as major aviation markets in Asia-Pacific lag behind their Western counterparts as they continue to be in part closed to international traffic.
Airport traffic recovery
There is positive news on this front as global passenger traffic is expected to improve significantly in 2022 reaching 77% of what it was in 2019, with traffic for 2022 forecast to total 7.1 billion.
For the full year 2021, the COVID-19 outbreak removed 4.6 billion passengers compared to 2019, representing a loss of 50.3% of global passenger traffic. Over the first two years of the pandemic, the COVID-19 outbreak reduced the number of passengers at the world’s airports by 10.2 billion.
