Un articolo su The Air Current considera le prospettive a medio termine dell’aviazione civile.

There are only two factors that will bring people back to flying — and one will take longer than the other and airlines cannot control either. The first is a vaccine […].
The second may be even more challenging. Can you or your employer afford to fly?

In un’intervista (disponibile anche su YouTube) Matt Barton, esperto di economia dei trasporti aerei, osserva come questa industria offra un servizio meno essenziale di quanto siamo abituati a credere:

“I know we like to think in the industry that airline travel is essential, and certainly some of it absolutely is… but there is a fair bit of it that isn’t. And that bit of it that isn’t has been growing. And a fair bit of that demand is brittle.”

Barton confronta inoltre i tempi di recupero del settore dell’aviazione civile in seguito a grandi crisi economiche, sottolineando come essi siano più lunghi di quelli dell’economia presa nel suo insieme (grafico visibile attorno al minuto cinque nel video).

Barton found that the amount of time it takes the airline industry to recover compared to when the economy recovers has grown over time when looking at the 1991 Gulf War, the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Anche Ed Bastian, CEO di Delta, ha dichiarato in un’intervista a CNBC che ci vorranno due o tre anni per riprendersi dalla crisi indotta dal coronavirus.

L’articolo chiude su una nota ancor più pessimista:

But at a strategic level, there’s a deeper worry that is gnawing at the industry’s leaders. Aviation is a mature market, intensely cost focused and disruption-averse. The existential worry is that aviation and aerospace has completed its ascent over the last century and the peak is behind us.