Estimating and Projecting Air Passenger Traffic during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak and its Socio-Economic Impact

Highlights

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  This work estimates different scenarios of air passengers loss due to the Covid-19 pandemia.

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  This work estimates the impact on aviation contraction on GDP growth and jobs losses worldwide and in EU27.

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  It is observed that in the first quarter of 2020, in most favorable scenarios about 0.02% to 0.12% of the world GDP (0.02% to 0.13% for EU27) could have been lost and, in the worst case scenarios, these number raise between 1.41% and 1.67% (respectively, 1.66% and 1.98% for EU27) for the whole year 2020.

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  Under the hypothesized scenarios the number of potential jobs lost in the aviation sector (direct and indirect) in the first Quarter of 2020, may vary between 310,000 and 2.21 million in most favorable scenarios (resp. 40,000 to 330,000 for the EU27), and between 25.68 and 30.31 million of units in 2020 (respectively, 4.19 and 5 for the EU27).

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  The results show that air traffic follows dynamics that appear to be geographically correlated to the spreading of the COVID-19 outbreak to different parts of the world.

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  According to our estimates, during the week 19-25 March the traffic had dropped globally by 52% compared to the traffic during the week 31 January-5 February. EU27 was the region worst affected by the decline in activity (down 65%).

Abstract

Due to the coronavirus global crisis, most countries have put in place restrictive measures in order to confine the pandemia and contain the number of casualties. Among the restrictive measures, air traffic suspension is certainly quite effective in reducing the mobility on the global scale in the short term but it also has high socio-economic impact on the long and short term. The main focus of this study is to collect and prepare data on air passengers traffic worldwide with the scope of analyze the impact of travel ban on the aviation sector. Based on historical data from January 2010 till October 2019, a forecasting model is implemented in order to set a reference baseline. Making use of airplane movements extracted from online flight tracking platforms and on-line booking systems, this study presents also a first assessment of recent changes in flight activity around the world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To study the effects of air travel ban on aviation and in turn its socio-economic, several scenarios are constructed based on past pandemic crisis and the observed flight volumes. It turns out that, according to these hypothetical scenarios, in the first Quarter of 2020 the impact of aviation losses could have negatively reduced World GDP by 0.02% to 0.12% according to the observed data and, in the worst case scenarios, at the end of 2020 the loss could be as high as 1.41-1.67% and job losses may reach the value of 25-30 millions. Focusing on EU27, the GDP loss may amount to 1.66-1.98% by the end of 2020 and the number of job losses from 4.2 to 5 millions in the worst case scenarios. Some countries will be more affected than others in the short run and most European airlines companies will suffer from the travel ban. We hope that that these preliminary results may be of help for informed policy making design of exit strategies from this global crisis.