Air passenger traffic through international airlines decreased by a record 66 percent in 2020, compared to 2019, due to the impact of the Corona epidemic, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
"This result is the biggest shock the sector has ever received," said Brian Pierce, head of IATA's economics department.
The Federation warned that the emergence of mutated versions of the Coronavirus casts a shadow over the possibility of achieving a recovery in 2021, without lowering its expectations for this year.
As for air cargo traffic, its activity recorded a significant improvement throughout the year, from the low level for the second quarter of the year, as global freight kilometers per ton declined by only 0.5 percent year on year in December. In 2020, the sector-wide freight tonne kilometers decreased 10.6 percent year-on-year, the largest decline since the union began keeping records in 1990. The available freight tonne kilometers at the sector level also decreased significantly by 23.3 percent year on year in 2020.
Source (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Newspaper, Edited)
