KUALA LUMPUR: 2022 is expected to be the recovery year for Malaysian airlines if the government introduces a new protocol specifically for international market to facilitate air travel, aviation experts said.
They, however, cautioned that it also might take until 2024 for the industry to recover to the 2019 levels.
Sobie Aviation consultant and independent analyst Brendan Sobie said all countries should agree on new travel protocols to enable resumption of international travel.
While Covid-19 vaccination programme would bring optimism, Sobie said it would likely take a longer time for countries to figure out the travel protocol to facilitate the reopening of air travel, even if the majority of their population was vaccinated.
He, nevertheless, said Malaysia's focus now was to contain the virus and followed by vaccination programme from the second quarter (Q2) of 2021.
Sobie said domestic market conditions should improve in Q2 but airline revenues would not be sufficient to support an overall recovery.
"This is because international recovery is not likely to start until late of 2021 at the earliest," he said at a recent virtual conference on the global pandemic impact on Malaysia's aerospace industry.
Sobie said the outlook for Q1 of 2021 could be bleak as revenues for Malaysian carriers would be around the Q2 of 2020 levels, thus erasing the improvement from the second half of 2020.
"Q1 of 2021 or the first half of 2021 outlook will be poor as the domestic travel currently is similar to Q2 last year due to the Movement Control Order 2.0," he said.
Sobie said the domestic market condition should start improving in Q2 this year, depending on the government's containment efforts.
"Once the virus is contained, we could see more domestic traffic but not full recovery this year. For international traffic, we will not see much recovery this year at all, unfortunately. But we hope for partial recovery in international traffic in the latter part of this year," he said.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers Malaysia's partner Edward Clayton said Southeast Asia was a major aviation region with one of the key drivers being a large amount of water and relatively long distances between key hubs.
"There is a strong consensus that people are likely to travel less far in the short-term due to the risk of individuals being stranded far from home when travel restrictions change at short notice," he said.
Clayton said the market was optimistic in August and September last year with expected return to normality in 2021 as the pandemic had appeared to be getting under control.
"However, that optimism has changed dramatically due to the second wave, which has made both people and governments more nervous and less confident about a return to normality.
"We can see vaccination has started, but many governments are very concerned about not wanting to let Covid-19 case spike again and are not yet convinced that vaccination will be the whole answer. They will want to see cases down for an extended period before everyone starts relaxing travel restrictions," he said.
Clayton said 2021 would likely be a quiet year for aviation, and perhaps in 2022 recovery might begin and the situation could improve by 2025 to reach 2019 levels.
He said humanitarian travel (for example allowing individuals to travel to meet their families) and business travel (beneficial for the country) could be the catalysts for the initial recovery in air travel.
Separately, Association of Asia Pacific Airlines director-general Subhas Menon said the region's recovery was likely by this year-end if countries can expedite their vaccination programme to get the population to be immunised within this year.
"However, a rebound to 2019 is expected to be in 2024. The next lap is for safe, smart and sustainable air travel. We work hard on the travel pass. When we have all this in place with an improved prospect, we can look forward to a better outlook," he said.
Subhas said the inconsistent and complicated nature of border restrictions would be a serious impediment to recovery unless governments can offer a solution for travellers to navigate and fulfil these requirements conveniently.
"The industry is working with various stakeholders to make seamless air travel a reality again. Safety and sustainability are the cornerstones of aviation as the sector prepares for new travel reality beyond Covid-19," he added.