The world’s leading airline experts are united in their gloomy assessment of industry prospects

One word summed up the mood of the dozen global airline analysts polled in the run-up to IATA’s annual gathering by Airline Business editors about the industry’s prospects: pessimistic.

“It’s going to be ugly,” says Peter Harbison, executive chairman of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. According to Chris Tarry, chairman of CTAIRA: “This downturn has the potential to be orders of magnitude worse than it was after 9/11 and more pervasive.”

In the US, where soaring fuel prices have already pushed several carriers out of business, “we are in the worst crisis since 9/11, though this is worse”, says John Heimlich, the chief economist of US airline group Air Transport Association. “In 2001, we were responding to a single catastrophic event; now we are suffering in response to a lengthy catastrophic process in the form of oil prices.”

Asia-Pa

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