Governments around the world should consider providing cost-efficient infrastructure to meet the growing demand of air passengers and facilitate freight movement, which are critical for global economic growth.
Today, the air transport industry is a vital driver of the global economy. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates that about 1% of global GDP is spent on air travel. Including direct taxation, that will be a total spend of $823bn this year.
For that, IATA anticipates that 3.5bn people will travel and 53.5mn tonnes of cargo worth some $7.3tn will be transported. Air travel accounts for some $644bn in tourism receipts. And the industry supports jobs; some 58mn worldwide with a total economic footprint of $2.4tn.
According to IATA, the aviation industry around the world still shows many deficiencies.
The GCC region has great airports but the skies are increasingly crowded and costs are rising.
“As Gulf’s airlines grow, so does the congestion in the region,” IATA chief Tony Tyler said at a recent press conference on the sidelines of the 71st IATA AGM and the World Air Transport Summit in Miami.
While the Middle Eastern carriers, especially those based in the GCC region, have grown phenomenally, Tyler said: “one of the challenges faced by the GCC countries is the mounting air traffic congestion in their airports”.
On the need for proper air traffic management in the region, Tyler said a significant portion of the airspace in the GCC was currently reserved for the military.
IATA is concerned that there is hardly any real progress vis-a-vis the “Single European Sky”. And, according to an aviation consultancy, Europe is headed for a 12% shortfall in airport capacity by 2035.
Another key aspect is further improving the safety standards as more people get on to the skies each year.
The governments and the industry led by IATA must deepen their partnership and work together with a common understanding of the need for “Smarter Regulation”, cost-efficient infrastructure to enable connectivity and a risk-based approach to security.
That said, commercial aviation’s safety performance seems to have improved considerably in the first quarter of this year with preliminary global jet accident rate showing just one accident for every 2.6mn flights globally.
The Q1, 2015 preliminary global jet accident rate (measured in hull losses per 1mn flights) was 0.38, IATA data show.
The preliminary first quarter safety performance was an improvement over the five-year rate (2010-2014) when the global hull loss rate stood at 0.45 but above the full-year 2014 rate of 0.23, which until then was the lowest in aviation history.
As the number of accidents drop, it is clear that sustainable future gains will come from a systemic, data-driven approach to safety that builds on continuous improvement supported by co-operation and partnership among safety stakeholders.
A global perspective that develops standards through the sharing of expertise and knowledge is vital to this strategy.
Clearly, the adherence to global standards and recommended practices are a pre-requisite to safety.