Welcome to May 2022 edition of Airport: The Bulletin.
Recent days saw the issuing of a revised passenger traffic forecast from ACI EUROPE. Never has the old sporting adage “it’s a game of two halves” been truer. For each statement that seems like a known or a given, there’s a but, an if, a caveat, a proviso. In sporting terms, just because you think you know the way things are going, doesn’t mean the game cannot still change completely.
And if it is hard to craft a firm narrative for our industry around these volatile predictions built on shifting sands, imagine what it is like running a business on this basis. Of course many of the readers of this editorial don’t need to apply much imagination to this task – it is their day to day reality.
So let’s look first at the figures. Here’s the headline: a full recovery to pre-pandemic volumes is now expected for 2024 rather than 2025. This is, of course, welcome news. For 2022 alone, the previously predicted -32% passenger traffic loss for the year is now -22%. Again, welcome (though it’s a strange world indeed where a loss of -22% of core business is considered good). Let’s not forget that this 2022 figure still means 540 million fewer passengers than in 2019. Nevertheless, and I do not wish to sound anything other than profoundly glad to see an uptick in outlook, any improvement is better than no improvement in the current climate.
Then, let’s look at the assumption that there is really such a thing as an industry-wide situation. Not necessarily so. As has been highlighted in this editorial slot before, no two airports are the same. Because traffic recovery is still largely driven by leisure traffic and fuelled by ultra-Low-Cost-Carrier capacity expansion, and because the well-documented staffing issues are hitting larger airports harder, it’s this slice of our membership still feeling the sharpest consequences.
Like the beleaguered sports commentator or weatherman, let’s try and make a prediction. This much we know: passenger traffic has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. So the certainty we are left with is that it could happen again. This much we also know: geopolitics are in flux, there is war in Europe, and COVID variants are not necessarily a thing of the past – any one of which could precipitate another retreat.
Is there an ask, a remedy, a buffer in all of this? Well, airports still need to rebuild their balance sheets and restore their ability to invest in much needed sustainability, digitalisation – and overtime, capacity. Clearly, inflationary pressures are further complicating the equation. So operating in a framework that allows for progressive and proportionate recovery of their losses will help stabilise and secure the longer term. It is still an ongoing dialogue with many actors. Good sense and the desirability of a recovering industry will, we hope, prevail.
Olivier Jankovec
Director General of ACI EUROPE
