It looks as though widespread international travel will not return until 2023. The future for domestic travel around Australia is looking brighter, however, with experts predicting it should essentially return to normal by the end of the year.
Alexandre de Juniac, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, delivered the news on ABC News Breakfast this morning. Juniac revealed that plans are in the works to reboot international travel in stages, by firstly tending to domestic travel, followed by continental markets (the Asia-Pacific region), with the intent to resume 50 per cent of flights by the end of 2020.
“We have published today a new forecast about the potential recovery of the air traffic, and what we see is that things should come back to normal in 2023, which is later than our previous forecast,” Mr de Juniac revealed.
“That shows, you know, the importance and the severity of this crisis on air transport….We should join progressively the historical trends by the beginning of 2023.
“What we have planned is to restart the industry, first by reopening domestic markets, then regional continental markets, such as Asia-Pacific, or Europe, or North America.
“At the end of 2020, the traffic should be between 50 to 55 per cent of the same level that was in place in 2019.
“So, we would lose something like half the traffic for the 2020.”
Some international travel may restart next year, but this will likely be reserved for professional or essential reasons. It has been predicted that international travel won’t return to “normal” for at least three years.
A silver lining to this sobering revelation is that Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern are in the process of working out a ‘trans-Tasman travel bubble’ between the two countries. There is a possibility that travel between Australia and New Zealand may resume when domestic travel is restarted — though this is yet to be confirmed.
“Once we have established effective travel arrangements across the Tasman, we will also explore opportunities to expand the concept to members of our broader Pacific family, enabling travel between Australia, New Zealand and Pacific island countries.”
I’d love to make some lighthearted quip about how Contiki summer is a thing of the past but honestly the knowledge that I probably won’t ever see elderly family members that live abroad again has caused my heart to feel as though it’s been funnelled through a meat grinder.
