“The situation is really difficult, caused by this worldwide recession. We face a demand shock. Traffic is disappearing. Cargo has never been so down,” he told reporters.

“It will take more than three years (for revenue) to recover. The (world) economy is not moving forward. We have piles of inventory – chips and cars – not moving,” Bisignani added.

The IATA boss is in Malaysia ahead of the association’s annual general meeting, which will be held here June 7-9. He said the meeting will focus on safety, environmental issues and industry liberalization.

Bisignani said Asia had emerged as the center of the problem – between January and April global passenger demand fell 7.5 percent, but Asian carriers led the plunge with 11 percent.

Bisignani said amid the swine flu outbreak and with no signs of global recovery, IATA would further downgrade its airlines losses for 2009, adding that the new, “more pessimistic” data would be revealed Monday.

“We are in intensive care. It will be substantially worse than March forecast. Now fuel price is going up. That is bad news,” he said.

IATA in March said losses during 2009 could hit $4.7 billion after forecasting in December that airlines could lose $2.5 billion. The airline industry posted a revenue of $530 billion in 2008.

Bisignani pressed for full liberalization between the European Union and US, and mergers between airlines, among measures he said would boost the industry.

Source: AFP