COVID 19 Impact on Air Travel Recovery

In the past weeks, we are receiving promising news about the efficacy of the latest COVID 19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. There are now more than 10 vaccines already in Phase 3 clinical trials with expected deliveries as soon as December 2020.

The current air travel market recovery is very much seismic in nature as governments around the world starting to impose lockdown and travel restrictions amid the rising wave of infections as we move toward winter of 2020. With this in mind, many aviation analysts are looking at the air travel market to begin rebounding by mid 2021 upon progressive implementation of vaccines by the end of this year.

As the air travel market recovery takes hold, aircraft deliveries combined with aircraft returning from storage is expected to increase the global fleet strength to 2019 levels by mid 2022. Aircraft maintenance requirements is also expected to snowball by from as early as mid 2021 as airlines puts them back to service. According to Aviation Week, by the end of 2030, narrowbodies aircraft will lead the charge with the 737 family rises to 10,600 while the A320 reaches 11,900 in-service, exhibiting a 3.7% CAGR for each even after a projected 28% reduction in new deliveries from previous estimates.