The airline industry has been deeply impacted by the health crisis, lockdown, closure of borders and planes pinned down. Therefore, the Aéroports de Paris group – managing the Orly airport and the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport as well as about twenty airports in the world – recorded a 543 million-euro net loss. Comparatively, the ADP group recorded a 250 million-euro net income the previous year.
“This is the first time in 50 years that air traffic has experienced a downturn this abrupt and it is established that the recovery will be very gradual: a return to the 2019 traffic level in Paris is anticipated between 2024 and 2027” ADP chairman Augustin de Romanet said in a release.
ADP chief financial officer Philippe Pascal bets the return to normal (similar to 2019) of the domestic traffic should occur “from 2021” and “in 2021 or in 2022 at the latest” for the Schengen area. “But the return to normal will be hampered by the slowness of the recovery of international traffic”.
As for long-haul routes, they will suffer from the decision of the States to open borders or not depending on the evolution of the epidemic, Pascal says, as well as “the difficulties linked to demand” and the “decline in aircraft fleets related to the stopping or sale of a certain number of planes”.
Moreover, the International Air Transport Association considers the world traffic should resume to normal in 2023 and assesses a 419 billion-dollar loss in 2020.
“The months of April and May saw almost zero traffic and the resumption of traffic was slow in the months of June and July,” Aéroports de Paris CEO Augustin de Romanet says, adding that “all of the group’s activities had been strongly affected from March”.
