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IATA forecasts COVID-19 could cost 11.6 million industry jobs in the Asia-Pacific and up to 25 million worldwide
April 9th 2020
International Air Transport Association [IATA] director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, said this week up to 25 million people – almost half of them in the Asia-Pacific – could lose their jobs in the aviation sector following the precipitous drop in passengers due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read More »
The estimated job losses, roughly equivalent to the population of Australia, were based on travel restrictions being imposed by national governments to slow the spread of the virus, IATA said on April 7.
IATA said the forecast also was based on a full-year decline in demand, measured by RPKs of 38% in calendar 2020.
The Asia-Pacific was predicted to shoulder the bulk of the pain, with 11.6 million jobs in aviation and related sectors in danger.
This was followed by 5.6 million jobs in Europe, 2.9 million jobs in Latin America, 2 million jobs in North America, 2 million jobs in Africa and 900,000 jobs in the Middle East.
"Demand is in freefall," de Juniac said during a conference with journalists on April 7. "Worldwide it’s down 70% compared with last year – 90% in Europe. It could even get worse."
"There are no words that can adequately describe how deeply this crisis is impacting aviation."
IATA said it would hold a series of regionally-based virtual meetings to bring together governments and industry stakeholders to work out the best way of "re-booting the industry".
The main objectives would be to understand what was needed to re-open closed borders and finding agreement on solutions that could be "operationalized and scaled efficiently".
De Juniac said it was important to learn from the past.
"We don’t want to repeat the mistakes made after 9/11 when many new processes were imposed in an uncoordinated way," he said.
"We ended up with a mess of measures we still are sorting out today. The 25 million people whose jobs are at risk from this crisis will depend on an efficient re-start of the industry."
Dates for the regional meetings, or summits, would be announced by April 30, IATA said.
