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IATA warns lack of airport capacity in global civil aviation

Xinhua, October 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

The civil aviation across the world is suffering from a lack of airport capacity, Alexandre de Juniac, Director General of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said on Tuesday.

"Providing infrastructure is the responsibility of the governments," de Juniac said at the opening of the three-day IATA World Passenger Forum in Dubai. "I fear that we may be headed for an infrastructure crisis."

According to him, the Single European Sky, an initiative to coordinate the design, management and regulation of airspace throughout the European Union, "is failing", which could lead to a loss of more than 245 billion euros (270 billion U.S. dollars).

In the United States, "air traffic management modernization is held captive to a politicized budgeting process and special interests," he said.

In the Gulf Arab region, "near gridlock threatens the efficiency of hub operations."

The director general urged the world governments to join forces to remove the barriers to "the business of free air traffic movement."

The aviation industry provides a total of 63 million jobs across the world and the number of passengers is expected to increase to 7.2 billion by 2035, twice as many as in 2016, he said. Endit