RIYADH: Passenger airline traffic within the Middle East confirmed indicators of improvement in October after a sudden slowdown in the summertime due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Figures released by the International Air Transport Affiliation (IATA) revealed that the number of passengers flying on regional airlines in October was down 86.7 % year-on-year in comparison with the same month in 2019, barely higher than the 89.3 % drop in demand for September.
Globally, traffic was down 70.6 % in comparison with October 2019, once more a marginal enhancement on the 72.2 % year-to-year drop in September.
Alexandre de Juniac, the IATA’s director normal and CEO, mentioned: “Recent outbreaks of COVID-19 and governments’ continued reliance on heavy-handed quarantines resulted in one other catastrophic month for air travel demand.
“Whereas the tempo of restoration is quicker in some areas than others, the general image for the international journey is grim.”
Muhammad Ali Albakri, regional vice president for the IATA in the Middle East and Africa, told Arab News last month that Saudi Arabia and the Middle East would really feel the economic impact of COVID-19 on the aviation sector for many years to come back.
“Saudi Arabia, just like different countries, was impacted rather a lot due to its massive networks. Saudi Arabia has around 94 international carriers flying in and out of the country, and all these had been stopped,” he mentioned.
He pointed out that attributable to its strategic geographical position, the Middle East had an excessive degree of connectivity, with 1,060 routes as of April 2019. When all flights in, out, and within the Kingdom had been grounded in March, it was severely impacted.
Whereas home flights restarted in May and Riyadh has reported that the quantity of traffic has recovered to nearly 60 %, international flights should not attributable to restart till January at the earliest.
Nicholas Cole, CEO of DAA International, the Irish company which manages the home terminal at King Khalid International Airport (KKIA) on behalf of Riyadh Airports Co. (RAC), recently informed Arab Information he estimated that home passenger traffic wouldn’t return to 100 % of ranges seen earlier than the COVID-19 outbreak till “the center of subsequent yr.”
That was mainly as a result of the lack of international traffic feeding into the domestic flights and the discount in pilgrims flying, he mentioned.
Meanwhile, the final meeting of the IATA has elected Ibrahim bin Abdulrahman Al-Omar, the director-general of Saudi Arabian Airlines, to function as a member of the IATA board of governors for an interval of three years.
The appointment was confirmed during the association’s 76th annual normal assembly, which was held nearly within the Dutch capital Amsterdam on Nov. 24.
