It said the global passenger traffic results for 2020 showed the sharpest decline in history for revenue passenger kilometres which fell by 65.9% compared with the full year of 2019.

“Capacity, measured in available seat kilometres, declined 68.1% and load factor fell 19.2 percentage points to 62.8%,” it said in a statement today.

“Domestic demand in 2020 was down 48.8% compared with 2019. Capacity contracted by 35.7% and load factor dropped 17 percentage points to 66.6%.”

IATA director-general and chief executive Alexandre de Juniac said: “Last year was a catastrophe. There is no other way to describe it.

“What recovery there was over the northern hemisphere summer season stalled in autumn and the situation turned dramatically worse over the year-end holiday season as more severe travel restrictions were imposed in the face of new outbreaks and new strains of Covid-19.”

According to IATA, the baseline forecast for 2021 is to record 50.4% improvement on 2020 demand that would bring the industry to 50.6% of 2019 levels.

“While this view remains unchanged, there is a severe downside risk if more severe travel restrictions in response to new variants persist,” it said.

“Should such a scenario materialise, demand improvement could be limited to just 13% over 2020 levels, leaving the industry at 38% of 2019 levels.”