People planning to spend a vacation in Australia might have to wait longer than what they are expecting since a top-level executive from the travel industry has speculated that it might take as long as three years for air travel in Australia to get back to normal.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused the travel industry to go to a complete halt all over the world and Australia, like many other nations, closed its borders for all non-Australian and non-resident citizens effective from March 19.
The chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, Alexandre de Juniac, predicted earlier that the travel industry will recover as soon as the lockdown ends. But now, he has given a statement saying that the total recovery might take way longer than initially expected.
In a statement to ABC News Breakfast, Juniac warned that the industry will fully recover only by 2023.
He told ABC News: “What we have planned is to restart the industry, first by reopening domestic markets, then regional continental markets, such as Asia-Pacific, or Europe, or North America.
“At the end of 2020, the traffic should be between 50 to 55 percent of the same level that was in place in 2019.
“So, we would lose something like half the traffic for the 2020.”
New Zealand and Australia, just like the UK and Spain, require a quarantine period of at least two weeks for anyone coming in from abroad.
Juniac opined that it is not advisable to restart international travel without quarantine, but at the same time, the isolation requirements will act as a deterrent for any leisure travelers.
According to Juniac, it would be better to screen people for symptoms like body temperature and keep the suspected ones from traveling rather than putting in place mandatory quarantine conditions.
He said: “It is a risk-based layered approach to biosecurity that needs to be coordinated globally.
“That’s important. The arriving country must be confident of the procedures in place at the departing airport. And travelers will need the reassurance of common measures.”
Professor Brendan Murphy, the chief medical officer of Australia, has also said that there’s no possibility for international travel to be resumed within the near future.
He made the point that there is no clear roadmap to open the borders of Australia for international travelers.
In a recent Senate inquiry into the Australian Government’s response to COVID-19, Professor Murphy said that it is cardinally important to keep the borders closed in order to fight the pandemic.
Professor Murphy said: “I can’t see, I have no vision at the moment on the current international scene where international border measures of some very strong vigor won’t be necessary.
“There is no clear roadmap out of this.”
Professor Murphy also made a point that interstate travel might be back by July but international borders would be far from being totally opened in the foreseeable future.
Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas, has the opinion that domestic flights will hopefully resume by July. He also said that Qantas is envied by the other airlines because of the volume of domestic passengers it has.
“I don’t think there is any other airline in the world that has a market that is more positive than what we have,” Alan told the media.
“Australia has done an amazing job of flattening the curve and we’re optimistic that domestic travel will start returning earlier than first thought,” he added.
Like other experts, Joyce also made it clear that “we clearly won’t be back to pre-coronavirus levels anytime soon.”
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