British Airways’ passenger traffic plunged by 80 per cent from pre-pandemic levels in 2019 to the end of 2021, according to new data from aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Virgin Atlantic’s passenger numbers, meanwhile, dropped by 83 per cent in the same period, meaning it fell out of the top 100 largest airlines in the world, slipping from 50th place to 105th.
Cirium revealed its 2021 World Airline Passenger Rankings on Thursday, based on more than 600 operators tracked in its airline database.
American Airlines came top as the biggest airline by passenger traffic for 2021, with 237,471 RPK (revenue per kilometre). Next biggest were US airlines Delta, United and Southwest.
Ryanair was ranked the world’s fifth biggest airline by passenger traffic, at 120,563 RPK. It also climbed the rankings from number eight in 201, while its low-cost competitor Wizz Air was ranked 19th, up from 31st in 2019.
The report showed that overall, worldwide passenger traffic was 57 per cent down on pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2021.
“Cirium’s analysis of the world’s leading airlines in 2021 reveals just how dramatically the Covid-19 crisis has altered the aviation landscape over the past two years,” said Cirium’s chief strategy officer Kevin O’Toole.
“Most striking from the figures is the sheer extent of the traffic collapse. From a high-point of nearly 4.7 billion journeys recorded in 2019, passenger numbers fell by more than 60 per cent in 2020,” he added.
“At the worst point in April the airline industry was recording the loss of close to 90 per cent of travellers.”
In its analysis, Cirium said that US airlines had recovered quickest as they relied mainly on domestic routes, where changing border restrictions were less of an issue.
Asia Pacific as a region was hit hard in the period analysed, with Cathay Pacific dropping 134 places on the airline ranking, from number 16 in 2019 to number 150 in 2021.
Meanwhile, Japan Airlines lost nearly 85 per cent of its traffic in 2020 and was still down by nearly 75 per cent at the end of 2021.
Mr O’Toole said it was “hard to overstate just how unprecedented this collapse has been”, pointing to the duration of over two years.
“As shown by ICAO records stretching back nearly a century, global traffic had only fallen on three previous occasions before Covid struck,” he wrote in his analysis.
“First was in the 1991 recession when traffic dipped by 2.6 per cent but then rebounded. In the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001, traffic again fell by 2.9 per cent and took three more years to hit a new peak.
“Finally, the financial collapse resulted in a more modest 1.1 per cent decline for 2009, but again growth had resumed within a year.”
In June, the UK’s main aviation hub Heathrow Airport slipped out of the top 10 best ranked airports in the world, going from number eight in last year’s rankings to number 13 in Skytrax’s 2022 list.
