The Director General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said that airlines will carry passengers Rising oil prices by raising ticket prices Relatively quickly, but increased energy costs will negatively affect the outlook for the entire sector in 2022.
Speaking after JetBlue made an offer to buy US budget airline Spirit Airlines, Willie Walsh said he saw more opportunities for acquisitions and mergers in the United States.
“It obviously caught the market by surprise,” Walsh said at a regular industry briefing.
“It is proof that the financial strength of US airlines trumps the rest of the world,” he said, adding that consumers have benefited from significant investments in new products.
IATA said global passenger traffic rebounded in February as the influence of the omicron mutant waned outside Asia. The Ukraine war has not yet appeared in the monthly data.
In February, passenger traffic was 54.5% of levels recorded in the same month in 2019, up from 50.6% in January but down from 55.1% in December. Shipping volumes were 111.9%.
Airlines are struggling to cope with soaring oil prices that accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a move Moscow describes as a “special military operation”.
Walsh said the rise exacerbated expectations that had already been expected to include an industry-wide loss in 2022, although some airlines will turn a profit at a time when the world is going through an uneven recovery.
Walsh stressed that airlines and airports were moving to address the staff shortage after the increase in demand, but that some factors were beyond their control.
Thousands of holiday travelers were disrupted or canceled because airlines and airports did not have enough staff to meet the recovery in demand as the pandemic restrictions eased in Europe.
“The challenge for the industry is to get workers back on the front lines where they need security checks on basic information,” Walsh said, adding that the process, which used to take five to six weeks, is taking “a much longer time now.”