Preliminary August 2020 traffic figures released by the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) showed that international air cargo demand that month, as measured in freight tonne-kilometres (FTK), registered a 19.3% decline year-on-year, reflecting the ongoing weakness of global trade flows.

While freighter operations remained active but significant cuts in the numbers of passenger flights led to a 33.4% year-on-year overall decline in offered freight capacity. As a result, the average international freight load factor increased by 12.3 percentage points to 70.6% for the month.

International passenger demand also stayed severely depressed as a result of ongoing border restrictions, with little indication of recovery in sight for the remainder of the year unless coordinated actions are taken to restore global connectivity.

Asia Pacific airlines carried only 1 million international passengers in August, or just 3% of the 34 million passengers carried in the same month of 2019.

"There is no international air travel market to speak of, as the border restrictions severely inhibit international air travel. Abrupt re-impositions of border closures by some countries due to a resurgence in COVID-19 cases have further shrunk passenger demand," said AAPA Director-General Subhas Menon.

He noted that the aviation industry is struggling to make sense of the "patchy, sweeping and unharmonized" approaches to border regulations being imposed by various countries.

"The latest traffic results underscore the need for governments to review existing restrictions and implement harmonised protocols based on objective risk assessments. Uncoordinated measures and abrupt changes to protocols only serve to diminish travel."

Urgent review of border closures

"AAPA calls for an urgent review of border closures and blanket quarantine requirements, particularly for travel between countries where the prevalence of the virus is low and contained. A more coherent and evidence-based approach to cross border measures and processes, including testing and quarantine, would pave the way to restore global mobility in a safe and sensible way," Menon added.