Brent Pin­heiro

from Switzer­land

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) di­rec­tor gen­er­al Willie Walsh says the use of air­space as an eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal weapon is “in­ap­pro­pri­ate” and “un­ac­cept­able.”

Speak­ing here at IA­TA’s Glob­al Me­dia Day in Gene­va, Switzer­land, yes­ter­day, Walsh called out gov­ern­ments for us­ing their air­spaces for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons, say­ing that air­space should be open to all car­ri­ers. He al­so wants gov­ern­ments to fol­low es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures in line with in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments.

“There are prop­er chan­nels to be used to an­nounce the clo­sure of air­space and we would en­cour­age all gov­ern­ments to fol­low those pro­ce­dures,” Walsh said.

IA­TA has warned that geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts are in­creas­ing cost for air­lines. The or­gan­i­sa­tion, which rep­re­sents over 350 air­lines, does not track the fi­nan­cial im­pact. How­ev­er, in its fi­nan­cial out­look for the glob­al air­line in­dus­try for 2026, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said, “air­space clo­sures, GNSS in­ter­fer­ence, and re-rout­ing for both po­lit­i­cal and safe­ty rea­sons are con­strain­ing op­er­a­tions and re­duc­ing ef­fi­cien­cies.”

On No­vem­ber 29, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump wrote in a Truth So­cial post that air­lines and pi­lots should con­sid­er the air­space above and sur­round­ing Venezuela to be “closed in its en­tire­ty,” de­spite the US hav­ing no le­gal au­thor­i­ty to do so. Trump’s an­nounce­ment came days af­ter the US Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­tra­tion is­sued a No­tice to Air­men (NO­TAM) warn­ing pi­lots about a “wors­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion and height­ened mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in and around Venezuela.” Sev­er­al ma­jor air­lines sus­pend­ed flights to the coun­try short­ly af­ter­wards, cit­ing safe­ty con­cerns, which led to Venezuela re­vok­ing their traf­fic rights.

But Walsh said each air­line is re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing safe op­er­a­tions.

He said, “Even where air­spaces de­clared to be open and avail­able, it is still the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the in­di­vid­ual air­line to con­duct a risk as­sess­ment and sat­is­fy them­selves that it’s safe for them to con­tin­ue to op­er­ate. Just be­cause one air­line op­er­ates and has de­cid­ed that it’s safe to do so does not mean that oth­er air­lines will op­er­ate. And it doesn’t mean that the air­line that’s op­er­at­ed has made the wrong de­ci­sion.”

How­ev­er, it’s not all doom and gloom. De­spite the var­i­ous geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts, sup­ply chain is­sues, and reg­u­la­to­ry bot­tle­necks, IA­TA is pro­ject­ing air­line in­dus­try rev­enues will reach US$1.008 tril­lion by the end of 2025, and US$1.053 tril­lion in 2026.

Led by strong car­go de­mand and record-high load fac­tors, air­lines are ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate a US$41 bil­lion prof­it in 2026 ac­cord­ing to IA­TA. That’s a US$1.5 bil­lion in­crease from 2025.

“That’s ex­treme­ly wel­come news con­sid­er­ing the head­winds that the in­dus­try faces…Air­lines have suc­cess­ful­ly built shock-ab­sorb­ing re­silience in­to their busi­ness­es that is de­liv­er­ing sta­ble prof­itabil­i­ty,” Walsh said.

And while Eu­rope is pro­ject­ed to de­liv­er the strongest fi­nan­cial per­for­mance of all the re­gions, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence ro­bust traf­fic growth de­spite soft­en­ing de­mand be­tween the Amer­i­c­as. Ac­cord­ing to IA­TA, glob­al op­er­at­ing prof­itabil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to re­bound in 2026. But de­spite the pro­ject­ed record prof­it, air­lines will on­ly earn US$7.90 net prof­it per pas­sen­ger. Mid­dle East­ern car­ri­ers are pro­ject­ed to earn the high­est amount, at $28.60 net prof­it per pas­sen­ger, while Latin Amer­i­can car­ri­ers are fore­cast to earn $5.70 net prof­it per pas­sen­ger.