“We can’t wait for the vaccine.” The outgoing General Director of the global airline association IATA, Alexandre de Juniac, has once again put huge pressure on to accelerate the restart of the aviation industry in the coming months with the help of mass corona rapid tests. The pandemic took the airlines with it almost last year, but so far only a few have gone under.

Sales melted The global business figures are still sobering. Instead of 4.5 billion people in the previous year 2020 only 1.8 billion people were traveling by plane. The decrease in passengers by 60 has 5 percent the turnover of the airlines according to IATA by more than 459 billion dollars to 328 Billions of dollars melted away. The losses add up to an estimated 118 $ 5 billion (99, 9 billion euros). This does not include the equally hard-hit aircraft industry, the airports and their numerous service providers.

According to their association ADV in the years and 2021 a loss of can cope with around 3 billion euros, so that around a quarter of the 180. 000 direct jobs are at risk. With Paderborn-Lippstadt, the first operator has fled into self-administered bankruptcy, and more could soon follow. The federal government wants to help as it does with air traffic control, but insists on the same high level of participation by the federal states, which are mostly owned by the airports.

Recovery on medium-haul routes Only if the corona vaccines, which are about to be approved for Europe, are distributed quickly and significantly more passengers are allowed to travel with the help of negative rapid tests, the IATA expects by the middle of the year 2021 a recovery in ticket demand. According to estimates, sales in the coming year should reach 400 billion dollars, the losses remained at just under 39 Billion Dollars Limited. Around 12 billion dollars would need the European airlines, which because of their small domestic markets are more dependent on international business than Americans, Russians or Chinese.

It has long been clear to the experts that business on medium-haul routes will recover faster than on long-haul routes, that tourist trips will be more likely to resume than those for business reasons. After all, Corona has brought a significant boost to digitization that will make many costly business trips appear superfluous in the future. However, the business travel association VDR expects a considerable backlog of personal encounters.

The effort per trip should increase: Around 80 According to the VDR barometer, percent of the companies expect more complicated planning and higher costs. And 90 percent want to check more precisely which trips in the future are really necessary.

Important air freight The airline industry is relevant to a globalized economy The air freight crisis proved, which expects a further boost to the distribution of the corona vaccines. Even if almost half of the loading options were lost due to the lack of passenger flights, cargo sales increased significantly to just under 118 Billions of euros and saved some airlines.

In the coming year, passengers will only find a thinned out connection offer, because the companies only fly if they at least cover the direct costs of a flight. On the old continent in April only 2110 city pairs were connected with direct flights, reports IATA expert Rafael Schvartsman. Before the crisis you could choose from more than 9000 destinations. Many destinations can only be reached with a stopover, which initially supports hubs such as Frankfurt, Paris or Amsterdam.

Subsidized transactions In the corona crisis, ticket prices have tended to fall in poorly utilized jets and the low-cost airline Ryanair has already threatened aggressive competitive prices for the restart. For the first time, the Irish can fall back on particularly inexpensive aircraft of the accident type Boeing 737 Max, which was released in March 2019 after two crashes with a total of 346 dead had been withdrawn from global traffic. After technical improvements, the return of the aircraft to the European skies is imminent.

Airlines die a slow death – if at all – because they are mostly carriers of national prestige. Around 118 billion euros have already been paid into their national governments in the current year Airlines pumped up. The IATA expects further transfers of up to 80 Billions of euros, as Juniac explained. Hot candidate for new billion syringes is Air France-KLM, which the French state, according to the newspaper Le Monde has already signaled further willingness to pay.

Job cuts The partially nationalized Lufthansa is concerned on the other hand, fresh money is currently successfully on the private capital market – with the declared goal of reducing the very expensive government investment of 9 billion euros in the long term. The group has brought hundreds of aircraft to the ground. Large jets with four engines and high kerosene consumption like the Airbus A 380 or older Boeing jumbos from Type 747-400 have been withdrawn from circulation and the workforce is also shrinking.

After the sale of the catering business in Europe, around 109. 000 people employed by the crane, which has not yet made any layoffs, at least for the German core brand. There are agreements with the flight attendants and ground staff unions on cost-cutting measures and severance programs that are designed to make redundant redundancies. So far, there has been no agreement with the pilots from the Cockpit Association. If it stays that way, 1000 of around 5000, Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr made it clear again.

(kbe)