The Secretariat worked with the Multi-Disciplinary Working Group on Long-term Traffic Forecasts and Members of the Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection to develop a set of post-COVID-19 forecasts scenarios by route group from 2018 to 2050. The forecasts have been developed for passenger and freight traffic, and revolves around three scenarios: mid, high and low. During its Third meeting held from 28 to 30 June 2021, the Aviation Data and Analysis Panel approved the post-COVID-19 forecasts scenarios.
The objective of the post-COVID-19 forecasts was to update the passenger Long-Term Forecasts (LTF) to account for both the short term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and eventual long term recovery requires a combination of updated macroeconomic data and recent estimates of the demand shock (measured in changes to Revenue Passenger-Kilometres (RPK)) to the aviation industry.
The freight LTF was re-estimated in a similar manner to the passenger forecasts by using the ICAO LTF models from the 2018 baseline with updated economic forecasts, the extent of the 2020 downturn, and near-term recovery guided by input from the MDWG-LTF and information from the industry.
In these times of uncertainties, the post-covid forecasts scenarios developed by the Secretariat and MDWG-LTF and duly approved by ADAP are expected to facilitate the planning needs of states, airlines, airports, ANSP and other stakeholders.
