SPECIAL REPORT: ROUTE DEVELOPMENT
Global effort With international travel still very much on hold because of COVID-19, restoring route networks and global connectivity is going to take the effort of all stakeholders that benefit from aviation, writes York Aviation’s James Brass.
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he last 18 months have been profoundly strange for the air transport industry. After years of growth and expanding route networks, government-imposed travel restrictions as a result of COVID-19 have reduced passenger numbers to a trickle and decimated route networks. The impact on the air transport industry and the employment and prosperity it supports has been profound, with hundreds of thousands of job losses worldwide and unparalleled financial losses. However, this is very much only a part of the story. The air connectivity that underpins the functioning of the global economy in terms of trade, investment, knowledge and labour flows, is currently only there in skeleton form. In Summer 2020, the number of route pairs served by the world’s airports had dropped by 53% compared to Summer 2019, and, while Summer 2021 looks better, with route pairs only down around 26% compared to 2019, there is still a very long way to go. Recovery is also uneven globally, with some regions suffering less and recovering faster (see graph on page 20). For instance, Asia and North America, with their large domestic markets, dipped less and are coming back more strongly than Europe, where there has been significant second and third waves of COVID-19 in recent months, and the market is more reliant on international travel. The economic recovery of cities, regions and countries around the world is dependent on building back this air connectivity. The Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) has estimated that aviation supported $3.5 trillion in GDP and 87.7 million jobs globally in 2018.
This estimate included aviation’s role in supporting tourism, which accounted for around $1 trillion of the total, but excluded aviation’s role in supporting trade and in driving productivity through investment and knowledge flows. If these effects were included the sector’s impact would have been significantly higher. Separately, IATA has recently estimated that a 10% increase in aviation connectivity can increase labour productivity, which directly links to GDP, by 0.7%. The impact of individual routes can vary considerably, but previous research for the Chicago Department of Aviation estimated the impact of a typical wide-body service at around $200 million each year, while research for Sydney Airport has estimated individual route benefits of around A$122 million each year. This highlights, at a more micro scale, the economic benefits that can be realised through route network growth. These figures help to articulate the ‘prize’ that is associated with a true and effective recovery of aviation. How governments and other stakeholders can support this recovery is a multifaceted question and the answers are not ultimately easy. Different airlines and airports are going to need different things, and needs are going to change over time as the industry builds back. However, there are some fundamental things that governments and other stakeholders can do to help the industry come back. At global and national level, bringing COVID-19 under control, vaccinating populations as quickly as possible and developing effective treatments are clearly essential. Travel is restarting, but there are many restrictions still in place. It is only with COVID-19 under control and with
AIRPORT WORLD/ISSUE 3, 2021
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