Yahoo Finance Air travel will be back to normal in 12 months, says Emirates boss
Air travel will be completely back to normal in little more than 12 months, the British boss of Emirates has predicted.
Sir Tim Clark, who has run the state-owned carrier for nearly two decades, dismissed fears that the aviation industry is facing a long road to recovery.
Covid will be “history” by 2023 at the latest, he said on the sidelines of the IATA annual meeting in Boston.
Forecasters have previously said that it will take until the end of 2025 for passenger numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Sir Tim, 71, also said that business travel, which some fear may never bounce back, would recover faster than many believed.
"I would say that probably by the end of next year and certainly into 2023, this will be history unless there's another variant," he said.
Airlines expect to continue racking up big losses next year. Forecasts by trade body IATA estimated that the industry will suffer $11.6bn in losses in 2022.
With losses of $138bn in 2020 and an estimated $48bn this year, the total cost of the pandemic is not expected to be more than $200bn.
Willie Walsh, IATA director-general and the former British Airways boss, said: "We are well past the deepest point of the crisis,” said. “While serious issues remain, the path to recovery is coming into view.”
The remarks came as Carsten Spohr, the boss of Lufthansa, claimed the German government had profited from bailing out Europe’s second-biggest carrier last year.
Lufthansa announced plans to raise €2.1bn from private shareholders two weeks ago and use the proceeds to help repay the €2.5bn state aid it received from Berlin last year.
As part of the deal, the German government was handed a stake in the airline.
“The government [has] made nice money from us, [getting] shares for almost free and then selling them at a nice price,” Mr Spohr said. “Taxpayers are happy; everybody is happy.”
Row over Airbus A350 cracks intensifies
Separately, a row between Qatar Airways and Airbus intensified over cracks in the fuselage of A350 aircraft.
Akbar Al Baker, chief executive of Qatar, disputed claims by Airbus that it identified the cause of the problem and insisted that it does not compromise safety.
“It is a problem with the paint that has led to us getting deterioration on the lightning protection of the fuselage and cracks appearing on the composite,” he said.
Sixteen A350s have been grounded by Qatari regulators and Qatar Airways has found more showing signs of the accelerated paint deterioration, Mr Al Baker said.
He said the same regulators had warned that more planes could be grounded and any solution from Airbus must be approved by the regulators and the airline.
“We also need to make it very clear we will not take deliveries of any aircraft unless there is a fix for the problem they have that is acceptable to both our regulator and the airline,” Mr Al Baker said.
Guillaume Faury, the Airbus chief executive, responded: “There’s no reason for the planes to be grounded.”
Airbus has provided additional guidelines to A350 operators on stripping and painting the aircraft and no additional inspections are required beyond normal scheduled maintenance, the company said.
