Aviation Industries Alone Stand to Lose $2 Trillion From the Corona Mind Virus
Passenger revenue losses for airlines alone stands to reach $250 billion this year alone
The losses for the wider global aviation industry, excluding airlines, from the coronavirus pandemic could exceed US$2 trillion this year, with millions of jobs at risk in Asia-Pacific alone, according to Zheng Lei, founder and president of the Institute for Aviation Research, an independent think tank.
“Airlines are the key to the whole supply chain, if they become problematic, other parts of the supply chain will be affected,” said Lei, who is also the head of aviation department at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
“As to impact on the global aviation sector, it has already surpassed US$200 billion. This is only for airlines, not including [the] impact on airports, retailers inside airports and on-the-ground workers. Its bigger impact should be more than tenfold of that on other sectors in the economy, such as to tourism, and shocks to export and import trade.”
According to recent estimates by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), passenger revenue losses for airlines in the Asia-Pacific this year are expected to reach around US$88 billion and US$252 billion globally.
The aviation ecosystem is vast and supports many industries. It includes in-flight meal providers, ground service companies, transport, storage and maintenance providers, employing millions in duty-free shops, retail and catering, ground staff, shuttle bus drivers and security personnel in airports across the world.
The aviation sector and industries associated with it have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, which was first identified in China. The world’s second-largest economy and its outbound travellers have been a major driver of the global tourism industry. They spent US$130 billion in 2018, up 13 per cent from a year earlier, according to the China Tourism Academy. But as the disease spread rapidly to more than 200 countries worldwide, governments imposed sweeping travel restrictions, forcing airlines to ground most of their fleet.
The aviation industry supported around 30.2 million jobs and contributed US$684 billion to the gross domestic product of countries in the Asia-Pacific region in 2016, according to the most recent figures from Aviation: Benefits Beyond Borders, a Switzerland-based organisation that represents all sectors of the air transport industry.
“An airport in an area has a very obvious effect in driving the local economy,” said Diao Weimin, a professor at the government-managed Civil Aviation Management Institute of China, adding countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines, which rely on tourism revenue, are feeling the most pain in Asia.
He said Chinese airlines and other relevant industries alone employ over 1 million people, while Shen Xiaofeng, a transport analyst at Huatai Securities was more conservative, saying that the number could be just over 800,000.
The Asia-Pacific Travel Retail Association (APTRA) on Wednesday called on governments in over 45 countries across the region to support 320,000 local and frontline employees by including the duty free and travel retail industry in the same financial support packages as airlines, airports and maritime industries.
“The dynamics of duty free and travel retailing are intrinsically linked to the aviation and maritime industries, and their viability is entirely dependent on the return in passenger traffic,” said Grant Fleming, president of APTRA.
Separately, Airports Council International, which represents the interests of airports in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, said airports in Asia-Pacific would see a loss of US$23.9 billion this year as 1.5 billion fewer passengers travel through the region’s hubs.
ACI said that as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak, airports’ revenue streams from both airlines and passengers have witnessed a sharp decline, adding that average passenger traffic had decreased by more than 80 per cent in the second week of March compared to a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Zheng Lei said that governments should take more measures to provide aid to sectors that are affected.
“When the government has limited money, it would need to make hard decisions to bail out some while leave the others for the market to decide, but aviation would be the priority in such a scenario,” he said.
Source: South China Morning Post
Boeing laid off 39,000 workers over the weekend. They were told that the layoffs were indefinite, and that they should seek other employment. The U$ started this panic, and I would say that’s its “hoist with its own petard,” but the bottom feeders were given $2 trillion to buy up the remains of major corporations like Boeing. This will be the largest transfer of wealth, from the productive to the parasites, in history.
It’s a head-scratcher why the CEOs of all world airlines have not joined
to call out the scam perpetrators, but have chosen to sit idle and watch
their respective business crumble.
I hope people remember who to thank for all this when they end up jobless and broke: The oligarch-owned mainstream media..