“Airlines will have to find a way to cover those costs or they will start making losses again,” at a time when they are barely back in the black and have to pay off the colossal debts incurred due to Covid-19, she added at the general meeting of her association, which brings together 300 airlines from around the world.
Despite order books that are sometimes full right up to the end of the decade, aircraft manufacturers are struggling to meet their delivery targets because of shortages of parts or materials from their suppliers.“Many airlines had to recut their deals with their flight and cabin crews… but also all of the supply, the ground handlers, the maintenance shops, they all had to pay considerably higher wages coming out of Covid,” said Geoffrey Weston, from the consultancy firm Bain & Company.
And given that the airline industry will have to invest hundreds, if not thousands, of billions of dollars in new aircraft and renewable fuels if it hopes to meet its 2050 decarbonisation target, IATA’s Owens Thomsen sees no respite for consumers any time soon.