Air Travelling Unlikely to Pick Up Much in 2021: CAPA  

NEW DELHI, Jan 5: The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), an aviation consultant, does not expect quick normalization of air travel even in 2021.

The CAPA has predicted that demand recovery will remain uncertain even in the current year, especially for international traffic. According to it, international traffic is only expected to recover 35-40% of financial year 2020 levels, while domestic traffic in financial year 2021-22 is expected to reach 70-80% of financial year 2020 levels.

 It stated that discretionary domestic travel segments (business, institutional, MICE, leisure and foreigners travelling on the domestic network), that accounted for an estimated 55% of the market before the Covid-19 outbreak, is unlikely to return until the pandemic is under greater control or deployment of a vaccine is widespread.

The CAPA also said even outbound travel would continue to be impacted by border restrictions and poor consumer confidence until there was effective roll-out of a vaccine.

According to CAPA, there has been very limited discretionary travel demand that could be stimulated through lower fares. Though some carriers opposed pricing restrictions, CAPA expects no major push to change the regulations.

(Manas Dasgupta)