Raul Barrera, SVP – Commercial and Business Development, Menzies, said the industry was still lagging behind the volumes of 2019 but growth was expected to happen in the near future, with markets due to perform 1.5 times their GDP growth.
"But we are dealing with a different number of challenges these days." he told delegates recently at the Americas conference at the Hard Rock Hotel, situated along Macao Beach. "Damage [due to the coronavirus pandemic] is still being felt by our business."
Santiago Valencia, Head of Maintenance and Technical Purchases, at ALTA, agreed with Barrera regarding growth trends, saying: "What we are seeing is a huge potential for growth in terms of travel per person. We know in Latin America there is a lot of business opportunities – up to 100% numbers of 2019."
Katarzyna Maslanka, VP South America, at IAG (International Airlines Group), said in terms of growth against 2019, there was progress when looking at the results of the last quarter of 2022, IAG was at 87% of 2019 volumes.
"Looking into the volumes of Q1 of 2023 we are only 5% below 2019 volumes that is worldwide. But if we look into the Americas we have exceeded 2019 volumes, almost by 2% in North America and approximately 1% for South America. We are definitely getting there but there is a long way to go, not only for the recovery volumes but preparing for what the current reality is like at the moment."
Ingrid Braeuninger, President, ATS an AGI Company also painted a positive picture: "We have started to see days which exceed 2019 and have seen a little bit of difference in the path of recovery between US and Canada.
"ATS has grown by 35% and we were fortunate enough to see a lot of growth during the pandemic."
Olivier Arrindell, CEO of Ava Airways, brought a different argument to the table, saying while growth was important as stakeholders in the industry they should hold government officials to account to the laws and regulations in place.
"We can talk about growth all day and all night. Rules are rules there are bilateral agreements in place. For example, there are no taxes on international flights, ground handlers can't do business properly, airlines can't do business properly because we want to just be friends with people that are controlling the regulations, which were established before most of us were born.
"It is called the Chicago Convention, and until we don’t sit down and hold our officials accountable our industry will always be a threat. It was a threat before Covid and it’s going to be a threat after that. This is what Ava Airways is doing at the present moment before we have an inaugural flight with the Airbus 320/350 because aviation is expensive no one is applying the rules and we need to challenge the change of that aspect first."
Agreeing with him, Braeuninger said: “We can talk about growth all day long but what are going to be the perimeters and some of the challenges?”
See the full Americas report in the next August issue of GHI.
