The global aviation industry has shown “surprising resilience” to terrorism, pandemics and natural disasters, and quickly adapted to situations, mitigating the impact of these crises, a study has shown.
While, the 9/11 terror attacks and the global banking crisis were the only two events to hit the industry hard, others like gulf wars, swine flu and volcanic eruptions did not have much impact and the industry was able to recoup itself soon, thereafter, it said.
“The analysis shows that global airline capacity has grown by 3.1 per cent per year since 1979, and that air travel is largely immune to regionalised events such as natural disasters, conflicts and fuel price spikes,” said UK-based aviation intelligence organisation, OAG Aviation. The industry has remained “mostly immune to all but the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and the global banking crisis,” it said in its ‘World Crisis Analysis Report’ released recently.
“In fact, in the vast majority of crises, there was a negligible impact on global airline capacity and, at a regional level, capacity dropped less than four per cent and recovered within three months.”
The analysis calculated the impact that events such as terrorism, pandemics and natural disasters have had on global airline capacity over the past 30 years, showed that the 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the 2008-09 global banking crisis were “the only two events since 1979 that caused significant decreases in global air capacity”.
This decline averaged a three and nine per cent drop in capacity and recovering within 36 months and 24 months respectively, it showed.
The analysis has “shown how quickly the aviation industry responds and adapts in the face of almost any disaster, which is reassuring news for world markets,” said Peter von Moltke, CEO of UBM Aviation which owns OAG aviation.
Between 1979 and September 11, 2001, world airline capacity steadily rose by five per cent, or, 94 million seats annually. The rate declined to 2.6 per cent or 81 million seats after the 9/11 attacks, the study showed.
