There were few industries hit harder in 2020 than aviation. Passenger demand fell by more than half, hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue were lost, and tens of thousands of jobs disappeared across the industry. But is there some light on the horizon for 2021?

Alexandre de Juniac is Director General and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). He’s been telling The Agenda’s Stephen Cole that he wants Governments to take a different approach:

“The good news, as everyone knows, is the arrival of the vaccine [which] should be available - on a large scale - not before 2021.We would normally see borders being significantly re-opened all over the world…What we are advocating for is that states do not wait for that date, but reopen their borders to allow the air traffic to restart.
“We are proposing not only a simple removal of the travel restrictions but the replacement of systematic testing.”

Of course, what the airline industry really needs is for travel and tourism to get back to something like normal. So, is that likely in 2021? The Agenda’s Stephen Cole asks Simon Calder - Senior Travel Editor at the Independent Newspaper.

Simon says his main concern is that tourists – even after being vaccinated – will still be hesitant to travel in fear of cancellations, which could rock the industry for years to come:

“A whole lot of people are saying, actually, ‘we don’t want to take the risk, we’re going to give it another year. And we may even, because of our uncertainties about travel, never travel again in the same way’.”

Watch #TheAgenda in full: https://cgtnamerica.vhx.tv/videos/forecasting-2021-theagenda-with-stephen-cole

Find out more: https://www.cgtn.com/europe/the-agenda

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