Air traffic in Europe might not return to its pre-COVID levels until 2029, Eurocontrol has said.
In a report published on Friday, the Brussels-based air traffic management agency said the number of flights in European airspace between January and April this year was down 65 per cent compared with the same period in 2019.
Depending on vaccine rollouts and the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against new variants, the body predicted three different models for the future of European air travel.
The best-case scenario assumed travel restrictions were lifted across the board by summer 2021 and predicted a recovery to 2019 traffic levels by 2024.
But if vaccine drives are patchy in Europe and globally, Eurocontrol said, this would hamper flights as well as passenger confidence and could delay a recovery until close to the end of the decade.
Photo: EC Audiovisual Service
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