Source: ICAO Opening the fourth consecutive edition of ICAO’s ‘Drone Enable’ Symposium yesterday, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu acknowledged that traditional aviation continues to undergo a fundamental evolution in light of the increasingly widespread use of unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS, as well as related modernization trends associated with digital communications and the emergence of advanced air mobility operators and other new entrants.   “We are now routinely seeing new types of aircraft, new use-cases, and new types of operations sharing airspace with traditional aviation,” Dr. Liu emphasized, “and this includes new businesses and humanitarian operations leveraging unmanned aviation technologies to better peoples’ lives, as exemplified by the transport of UN COVAX vaccine shipments from ports to hard-to-reach inland [...]

Source: ACI LAC The Airports Council International Latin America and the Caribbean (ACI-LAC), the Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association (ALTA), and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have renewed  their call to governments in Latin America and the Caribbean in regards of the need to plan in advance and in a coordinated manner so that commercial aviation can resume once the new mobility restrictions are lifted in the region. The industry understands that governments’ primary focus is on dealing with the public health crisis. Nevertheless, the sector has been devised and implemented the necessary policies and procedures to allow aviation to safely operate during the pandemic. The recent tightening of travel restrictions has forced airlines into last minute flight cancellations [...]

Source: ICAO Speaking to the UNWTO Global Tourism Crisis Committee and Commission for the Middle East yesterday, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu noted that ongoing pandemic impacts on international mobility reveal that the world is “back to 2003 levels in terms of global seat capacity.” “Here in the Middle East, passenger totals dropped by over 70% and recovery in general is proceeding more slowly than in some other areas of the world, mainly due to the high levels of international passenger movements here,” Dr. Liu emphasized. Stressing that the precipitous decline in air traffic continues to present severe liquidity strains to companies and suppliers throughout the air transport and tourism value chains, the ICAO Secretary General identified three key [...]

Source: IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced that passenger traffic fell in February 2021, both compared to pre-COVID levels (February 2019) and compared to the immediate month prior (January 2020). Because comparisons between 2021 and 2020 monthly results are distorted by the extraordinary impact of COVID-19, unless otherwise noted all comparisons are to February 2019, which followed a normal demand pattern.   Total demand for air travel in February 2021 (measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) was down 74.7% compared to February 2019. That was worse than the 72.2% decline recorded in January 2021 versus two years ago. International passenger demand in February was 88.7% below February 2019, a further drop from the 85.7% year-to-year decline recorded [...]

Source: IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released February 2021 data for global air cargo markets showing that air cargo demand continued to outperform pre-COVID levels with demand up 9% over February 2019. February demand also showed strong month-on-month growth over January 2021 levels. Volumes have now returned to 2018 levels seen prior to the US-China trade war. Because comparisons between 2021 and 2020 monthly results are distorted by the extraordinary impact of COVID-19, unless otherwise noted all comparisons to follow are to February 2019 which followed a normal demand pattern. Global demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometers (CTKs*), was up 9% compared to February 2019 and +1.5% compared to January 2021. All regions except for Latin America saw an [...]

Source: ICAO ICAO joined four other UN agencies today in calling on countries to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations for aircrew and seafarers. In addition to ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu, the special Joint Statement was signed by the heads of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the World Health Organization (WHO). “The implementation of the current WHO recommendations are of primordial importance to the continued and optimal operation of the international civil aviation network, and therefore to the transport worldwide of essential shipments and workers,” Dr. Liu declared. The Joint Statement stresses the WHO’s advice that at the present time countries should not introduce requirements of proof of vaccination [...]