The losses for the wider global aviation industry, excluding airlines, from the coronavirus pandemic could exceed $2 trillion this year, with millions of jobs at risk in Asia-Pacific alone, according to Zheng Lei, founder and president of the Institute for Aviation Research, an independent think tank, reported the South China Morning Post.
“Airlines are the key to the whole supply chain, if they become problematic, other parts of the supply chain will be affected,” said Lei, who is also the head of aviation department at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
“As to impact on the global aviation sector, it has already surpassed $200 billion. This is only for airlines, not including [the] impact on airports, retailers inside airports and on-the-ground workers. Its bigger impact should be more than tenfold of that on other sectors in the economy, such as to tourism, and shocks to export and import trade.”
According to recent estimates by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), passenger revenue losses for airlines in the Asia-Pacific this year are expected to reach around $88 billion and $252 billion globally.
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