Willie Walsh, the Glasnevin-born director of the International Air Transport Association, has said the Gulf of Hormuz oil crisis does not compare in scale with the 2020 pandemic in terms of disruption of international travel.
Willie Walsh shared: ‘I don’t see this as a crisis. I’m sorry, I’m sitting in an IATA position saying that. Maybe when I change my role, I might take a different view, but you’re looking at an industry that is still forecast to be profitable. You’re looking at an industry that is forecasting growth. During COVID we were an industry that was grounded. In May of 2020 I think traffic was down 95pc versus the previous year. This year traffic to date is up 2.1pc and if you exclude the impact of the Gulf is up 4.8pc, it’s nothing like we experienced during the COVID period.
And it’s going to be very challenging and for a lot of airlines the increase in the fuel bill is potentially existential for them. If you’re a smaller carrier in a weak market being able to respond to the higher fuel bill is going to be extremely difficult, when we talk about profitability at an aggregate level that doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to be profitable, for some airlines I think this year is going to be very very tough. But it’s nothing like what the industry experienced during the COVID period.”
