IATA – Airlines lose 1.7 billion dollars from ash chaos
Airlines have lost around 1.7 billion dollars after it´s week without revenue due to the chaos caused by volcanic ash, the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Wednesday. Giovanni Bisignani told reporters in Berlin that at the height of the upheaval on Saturday and Sunday, carriers were losing 400 million dollars per day and said that earlier estimates of 200 million dollars per day, had been conservative. He also said that the sector had been left to pick up additional costs like providing accommodation to stranded customers, food and alternative modes of transport to get them home. He added that they´d seen a week without revenue but that had not stopped the costs. He said that in Europe, Governments must take their responsibility by helping the carriers, calling the firms victims of “an act of God, completely out of the power of the airlines. He did comment, however, that the situation was different from the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11 when airlines were bailed out by governments. After 9/11, it took a long time to recover because it was an issue of confidence and hoped that the chaos of the past week was a “parenthesis.”
European air travel was slowly returning to normal on Wednesday after volcanic ash drifting from an eruption in Iceland prompted a shutdown last week that left millions of passengers stranded and hit the economy.
The chief executive of Lufthansa, Europe’s biggest airline by passenger numbers, said that the firm had no estimate on how much the stoppage had cost the firm but that it was not marginal. Wolfgang Mayrhuber, at the same event in the German capital said that they don’t need a bailout or an umbrella but as an industry, they will have to make up their minds whether state aid is required or not. we want state aid or not.
Asked how fast he thought the sector would recover, Mayrhuber said that the volcano will not change the desire and need to travel.
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