TAC Analysis details its 2022 forecast in two parts, continuing with the obstacles and opportunities facing airlines heading into the new year. The United States traffic doubled in 2021, rebounding as passengers continue to return to the skies, but the remaining recovery will be paced by the airlines’ ability to accept it. Touching 89% of 2019 levels on Thanksgiving weekend, we expect the recovery to stall, ending 2022 still below 100%.
TAC Analysis details its 2022 forecast in two parts, beginning with an examination of how 2021 unfolded. Domestic U.S. load factors returned to 2019 levels during the summer season, filling the available capacity to the brim. As demand continues to return without sufficient capacity to keep pace, fares have already returned to 2019 levels, a trend expected to continue in 2022.
In this TAC Analysis, we revisit the potential re-arrival of a pilot shortage, and how it may quickly become the limiting factor in the recovery. Crucially, while regional airlines were a welcome source of strength during the COVID pandemic, the lack of pilots in the United States could quickly turn the strongest regional jet market on its head. At play are both the near-term effects of staffing flight decks affecting the world, as well as the long-term challenges unique to the United States -- where pilot supply issues have already exposed an acute operational strain on the system.
The operational disruption at the largest domestic carrier in the U.S. is a warning for the broader mid-pandemic economy, left fragile by the COVID-19 induced collapse of early 2020 and the whiplash-like rebound of some sectors of the economy.
As COVID-19 mutates to continue its torment, aviation adapts right along with it.
Airbus is bringing its biggest aerostructures suppliers home as part of a far-reaching strategy to deeply integrate both its design and supply chain architecture together for future aircraft. A batch of more than 100 recently-delivered Boeing 737 Max aircraft remain grounded following a design change that inadvertently interrupted safe electrical discharge inside areas of the flight deck. And since the start of the pandemic the U.S. has led new aircraft ordering globally by a large margin.
The heavy impact of aviation's most acute contemporary crisis is only just beginning to be felt on regulatory relations.
If certain contractual issues, particularly around the CFM engines, can’t be overcome in this pre-campaign period, a head-to-head competition will follow and likely give the edge to Airbus and the A220.
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