Question Of The Day: Recovery Mode

Do you think the current recovery in the market is here to stay?

Birmingham International Airport aviation director Tom Screen: "I don't know. My nervousness is with the cost of living crisis and inflation going up the way it is. This summer has boomed which is great, but I can’t see how it's going to be past October. But if you look at previous dips in traffic such as SARS or 9/11 it always bounces back, and it will. There might be a little bit of bumpy weather ahead, but after that, I think it will come right back."

Istanbul Airport VP of Aviation Majid Khan: "Yes, we believe so. Of course there are some temporary flows which will disappear. What we see now is the effects on the Siberian corridor, especially where the European carriers are struggling to fly to Asia. Even when Asia opens it will take longer for the recovery from Europe to Asia and vice versa, and this is something which is benefitting Istanbul, Dubai, Doha, but we see this benefit as temporary. But the point-to-point Asian market will come back quite quickly and there is a big backlog. So we believe this is something which will definitely stay and encourage people to fly to fly more."

ASM Global director of air service development Chris Warren: "From a US perspective I think it is, with some risk, looking at if you look at the different demand drivers in the US right now assuming we don’t have another major COVID wave restrictions came down. Nobody's really surprised that leisure travel has responded the way it has because there's so much pent-up demand and we'd have a lot more service it wasn't for the operational and the staffing challeges. I think the biggest surprise over the last two months in the US is the return of business travel. American Airlines in their first quarter earnings call said they expected business travel back to 90% of pre-COVID levels system-wide, which includes Asia not being recovered. There's a theory that this is a little bit of a bubble of initial travel, and then we'll find out, but assuming that the main part of the pandemic is over the demand is back. But there's still going to be operational and staffing issues in the US for six to 18 months. Demand is there but supply might take some time."