Both domestic and international air travel capacity and demand on the whole continued to show month-over-month improvement in October, with progress seen “on the back of rising vaccination rates and deceasing air travel restrictions,” according to the International Air Transport Association. This upswing, however, may be short-lived, the association warned, because of the recently detected Covid-19 omicron variant and the international travel bans some countries have begun to impose in response.
“October’s traffic performance reinforces that people will travel when they are permitted to,” IATA director general Willie Walsh said in a statement. “Unfortunately, government responses to the emergence of the omicron variant are putting at risk the global connectivity it has taken so long to rebuild.”
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October 2021 global air demand as measured in revenue passenger kilometers was down 49.4 percent compared with October 2019, representing an improvement over…
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