Air travel optimism as flights predicted to return to near 2019 levels

Two years after Covid-19 first struck, the pan-European aviation organisation Eurocontrol has begun 2022 with a note of cautious optimism for the sector and a prediction that air traffic is on track to recover to 70-90% of 2019 levels.

Published earlier this week, the Eurocontrol Think Paper is based on the latest data to provide a summary of the key indicators for European aviation in 2021, and the organisation's expectations for how the sector's recovery will continue in 2022.

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Last year saw a "partial but crucially sustained traffic recovery in Europe", Eurocontrol said. January 2020 saw just 36% of 2019 air traffic levels, but as the year went on, figures recovered steadily as a result of mass vaccination programmes, as well as the EU Digital Covid Certificate. The high point of the summer was on August 27, when traffic reached 70% of the previous year with 26,773 flights.

Holiday flights continued into the autumn and traffic rose to 81% in late October. Despite Omicron and the additional health and safety requirements introduced by many countries, air traffic in December reached 78% of 2019 levels.

Overall, annual traffic across Europe's aviation network in 2021 reached 56% of 2019 levels.

Eurocontrol said that it did not expect the growth to unravel in 2022 and that air traffic was on course to recover to 70-90% of 2019 levels by the end of the year.

Nonetheless, it pointed out that the financial and sociological impact across the network in 2021 remained "huge" and "not vastly better than the first year of the pandemic" with €18.5 billion in European airline losses, 4.9 million fewer flights and 1.5 billion fewer passengers.

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Eamonn Brennan, Director General, Eurocontrol, said: "The situation remains right now enormously challenging. Traffic may currently stand at 78% of 2019 levels, but the unfolding Omicron situation is pushing many of Europe’s top airlines to cut capacity in January by up to 30% – and in parallel, we are starting to see some flights cancelled due to Covid-19 exposure among crew members.

"Nevertheless, I remain confident that 2022 will build on the resilience aviation showed in 2021 to a crisis that had paralysed economies the year before. As soon as the situation improves, we expect to see a rapid rebound to bring European aviation a lot closer to 2019 traffic levels. At the same time, this year we must urgently accelerate our plans to make aviation sustainable, building back better with major investment in new technological solutions."

Read the full Eurocontrol Think Paper here.

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