Assaeroporti. In 2020 air traffic down by 75%: a quarter of passengers in 2019

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December 26, 2020 "According to the latest estimates of December, the airport traffic in the first two weeks of November continued the trend with a -90% and in the third week about -80% due to the concentration of the trips before the lockdown.

. So 2020 will close with no more than 53 million passengers, just over a quarter of the traffic of 2019 ".

Thus the general manager of Assaeroporti,

, at Ansa.

The "sector is like a thermomer" and although the data is now "dramatic", the "

", he explains: we must "be helped to resist".

The latest official numbers published by Assaeroporti, which relate to November, "are worrying", highlights Lener.

"Passengers show a 90% decrease compared to November 2019" and in the March-November period as a whole "we lost 130 million

on Italian air transport

and the forecast we had before the pandemic to end 2020 with 200 million travelers ". 

In these eight months of a medical emergency, "

, with 70% of the passengers, while traffic EU the decline was 87% and the non-EU 94%.

, which in November decreased by only 11%, thanks to the key role that air freight transport plays for e-commerce and the distribution of personal protective equipment ". 

"Looking to the future, the Eurocontrol estimates to which we refer, identify various scenarios: in the most positive one, with an immediate effectiveness of the vaccines, the

is expected

; while at the worst this date has even moved to 2029 ", explains the Assaeroporti manager, recalling however how this sector is" very sensitive to epidemiological evolution but also extremely resilient: on 12 April we reached -99.7% for reach -59.5% on 11 August and find ourselves in a highly critical situation again in December.

, albeit slowly ". 

And if the last flight block, with the new variant of the virus, gave "a further slowdown", it should not "have an impact on the annual balance sheet, since we were already at -90%".

Finally, in thinking in perspective, what has happened in recent months cannot fail to be considered in the next National Airport Plan which the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Paola De Micheli is working on.

"We have already had two meetings, we have not yet thought about the post-covid world" explains Lener, however suggesting the need to consider some aspects that emerged during the emergency: "in these months of lockdown passenger traffic has decreased, but even more the connectivity indices, whose growth in recent years has significantly contributed to the economic and social development of entire areas of our country, fueling important tourist flows, this must be taken into account in the plan. And then we will have to work by scenarios , so that the sector can be more ready to restart ".