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SINGAPORE – Personal and leisure travel will return from the second half of this year as borders reopen to tourists hungry to be free again and to reunite with family and friends, said the director of the International Air Transport Association. (Iata) in an interview with The Times of the Strait.
Alexandre de Juniac said that the recovery in business travel will be slower and that the actual volume of travel by the end of the year will remain low compared to the pre-Covid-19 period in 2019.
“We are likely to start to see a change in the air travel landscape after May or June of this year,” he added. “In Iata we are already working with the states to design and plan protocols and roadmaps for the reopening of borders.”
One of the main of these protocols is Iata’s Travel Pass, a mobile health verification app that electronically captures a traveler’s vaccination history and Covid-19 test results for cross-border security checks.
Singapore Airlines has been the first to officially announce that it will begin testing the Iata Travel Pass on flights from Singapore to London.
Starting Monday, passengers on that route using Apple iOS phones will be able to download the Travel Pass app and create a digital ID with their photo and passport information.
They can submit flight information and book a Covid-19 test at one of the seven participating clinics in Singapore, after which the test results can be viewed directly on the app. Check-in staff at Changi Airport can check your status through the app, which will speed up the check-in process, according to the carrier.
But due to current regulations, travelers will still need to carry a physical copy of their health certificate issued by the testing clinic.
China has just announced the launch of its vaccine passport, while Germany and the United States are set to introduce theirs soon.
De Juniac, who is stepping down from his five-year tenure next month and handing over the reins to Willie Walsh of IAG (which owns British Airways), said Iata aims to work with 33 states and territories around the world. in the reopening of borders and internationals. flights.
There is a huge pent-up demand for air travel, he added. “You never appreciate what you had until you lose it. People are hungry to be free again, to travel again.”
See that personal and leisure trips return more quickly than business trips.
“Personal travel will definitely rebound, but business travel will take 12 to 18 months to rebound,” he said, alluding to the fact that many companies have adopted digitization technologies over the past year to connect and continue their business.
But even with the gradual opening of the borders, de Juniac said that the volume of passenger air traffic by the end of this year will remain relatively weak compared to the pre-Covid-19 of 2019, although better than in mid-2020.
“The governments of many countries are cautious and remain in emergency mode amid the emergence of new variants of Covid,” he added. “They have to handle their domestic circumstances first.”
But Iata, whose 290 global airline members account for 82 percent of world traffic, and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will speed up protocols for safe air travel. “We are working with our partners on vaccination, testing and safe air travel measures,” de Juniac said.
Meanwhile, ICAO, which last year implemented various guidelines such as masks, health declarations and empty intermediate seats on airplanes, is expected to announce its latest health and safety guidelines protocols in the coming weeks.
What will the new normal look like in aviation?
“In the short and medium term, there will be fewer players (airlines) and smaller planes. The airlines that survived the crisis will be more competitive, having drastically reduced costs and reduction.
“We will continue to have low-cost, full-service segments, but full-service operators will not see business and the long term coming back for a while.”
But de Juniac doesn’t see much consolidation in the industry either. “Given the acute shortage of cash in the industry, airlines will not be able to just go out and buy competitors. Especially when states have distributed taxpayer money in airline bailouts. It is unlikely that they will just liquidate.”
He added that the crisis brought an important lesson: that the industry needs to strengthen its financial management.
Although airlines that were the strongest before the crisis have survived, much of the industry is struggling with tight margins and “lopsided” balance sheets, he said.
“Ironically, having dealt with past health problems like Sars and Ebola, the airlines were better prepared for this crisis. We had the tools.
“But the unprecedented global nature of the crisis showed that we were not sufficiently prepared. We need more cooperation and collaboration between various partners, including governments and regulators,” said Mr. de Juniac.
Geographically, Asia-Pacific will emerge as the most robust region for global air traffic, he predicted.
“We already saw this rally before Covid, and the Chinese market was already number one, and it was ahead of the United States. This trend will just accelerate.”
But growth could be uneven, he said. “The key will be how individual states and territories open their borders as vaccine deployment and the testing regimen accelerate.”
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