DUBLIN (Reuters) – It will take several years for the global aviation industry to recover to 2019 capacity levels as airlines have retired aircraft and made critical staff redundant, the head of the global airline industry body IATA said on Wednesday.
“The ability for the industry to recover to the 2019 levels of capacity quickly is now impossible,” IATA Director General Willie Walsh told an Irish parliamentary committee.
“The reason I say that is … we have seen a lot of aircraft have been returned. So therefore the aircraft are not available. A lot of critical staff, unfortunately, have been made redundant.”
(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Kevin Liffey)