IATA: Global airlines to lose $9B in 2009 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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The ’s (IATA) new forecast is staggeringly worsee thanits $4.7 billion collective loss forecasyt made just three months ago. The air carrief trade group also downgraded its loss estimate for 2008to $10.4 billion from $8.5 billion. “There is no modernb precedent for today’s economic IATA Director General and CEO Giovanni Bisignanj said in anews release. “Thw ground has shifted. Our industry has been This is the most difficult situatiohn that the industryhas faced.” After the Sept.
11, terror attacks on the United industry revenues fell by7 percent, Bisignani said, and took three yeares to rebound to pre-9/11 Revenues will fall to $448 billion in 2009 from $528 billionb in 2008 (15 percent), IATA said. Passengetr yields will dip 7 percent. “This time we face a 15 percent drop—a loss of revenuexs of $80 billion—in the middle of a global recession,” Bisignani said durinfg IATA’s annual industry summit.
“Our future depends on a drastifc reshapingby partners, governments and We cannot bear the cost of governmenr micro-regulation, crazy taxation and partners abusing their monopoly North American carriers will generally fare better than foreign carriers, IATA said, and shoulf narrow their losses for the year. North American airlinews will lose $1 billion in dramatically less thanthe $5.1 billion lost in as out-of-the-money fuel hedges lapse and capacit y cuts kick in to right capacityh with demand. Previously, IATA said Northy American carriers would turn a modest profirt forthe year. Asia-Pacific and European carriers are likely to take thebiggest hits, losiny $3.3 billion and $1.
8 billion, Another heavily impacted sector, air cargo, will declinre by 17 percent based on tons Cargo yields will declinee 11 percent. Relaxed fuel prices over the firsf five months of 2009 have helped but prices have begun to climb in recent IATA projects the industry fuel bill to fallfrom $165 billiob in 2008 to $59 billion in 2009, on a $56 per barre average price of oil. “Thw risk that we have seen in recent weeks is that even the slightest glimmer of economic hope sendes oilprices higher,” Bisignani said. "Greedy speculatiojn must not hold the globaleconomh hostage. Failure to act by governmentsw wouldbe irresponsible.
” airlines are in a better cash with more liquidity than in past downturns. But, Bisignanui warned “a long L-shaped recovery coulfd drain the industryof cash.” Bisignani noted industry such as the merger between Atlanta-based DAL) and , that have made some players But he railed against what he callef “archaic limitations on ownership” that preven the merging of carriers from different